Bomb threats force 8 Wash. courthouses to evacuate
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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Multiple bomb threats forced eight Washington courthouses to evacuate Thursday afternoon, and officials don't yet know if the threats were coordinated.
The Thurston County Courthouse complex was evacuated at roughly 3:30 p.m. after receiving a bomb threat over the phone. Workers in all three of the courthouse buildings left for the day as law enforcement swept the area.
The roughly 400 inmates housed inside building one were not evacuated, according to Lt. Greg Elwin with the Thurston County sheriff's department.
Elwin said county employees were on edge after the call came in.
"It's very alarming to everyone who works here," he said. "We had to escort people out of courtrooms, get judges off of benches and disrupt citizens who were here doing business."
By Thursday evening, the entire complex had been searched using bomb sniffing dogs and no suspicious devices were found.
Similar bomb threats forced Chelan and Douglas County officials to evacuate their courthouses, according to the Wenatchee World newspaper.
Wenatchee Police Chief Tom Robbins said a man called into the Chelan County Auditor's office at 3:15 p.m. claiming there were bombs in the courthouse set to go off in 18 minutes, according to the newspaper.
Authorities evacuated the courthouse and searched the area, but did not find a bomb.
Douglas County Sheriff Harvey Gjesdal told the Wenatchee World that the Douglas County Commissioner's Office received a phone call at 3:52, warning them of a bomb in the courthouse.
Deputies searched the courthouse, but nothing unusual turned up.
The Benton and Adams County courthouses also received telephone bomb threats Thursday afternoon, according to county officials.
Adams County Undersheriff John W. Hunt said a man called the the Superior Court Clerk's Office just before 3:30 p.m. to say several bombs were in the building and would detinate in 20 minutes. The building was evactuated while deputies searched area. Nothing suspicious turned up and employees were let back into the building just before 4:30 p.m.
At roughly 3:20 p.m., a man called officials in Clark County and said there were several explosive devices inside the courthouse in Vancouver. The man said the bombs would go off in 20 minutes. The building was evacuated and searched, but no devices were found. The courthouse reopened a short time later.
Similar threats were called in to the Pacific and Columbia County courthouses.
King, Grays Harbor and Whatcom County officials say they did not receive any threats, and the Kitsap, Snohomish and Skagit County courthouses were all closed Thursday afternoon.
This is the second time in less than two weeks that a state has been inundated with bomb threats. Elwin pointed to a Nov. 2 incident in Nebraska when 9 courthouses received bomb threats within an hour of each other.
Just like Thursday's Washington bomb threats, the caller in the Nebraska cases told court clerks there were bombs in the courthouse set to go off.
No arrests have been made in that case.
Well let's make sure all the employees make it out and screw the inmates??? REALLY???
Couldn't have happened to nicer people.
 @Donna L You must be talking about the Tax Payers? We will all get the bill.
Columbia County (Dayton WA) makes the map! Yeah!!!
it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out someone didn't want to go to court today, so called in a bunch of bomb threats. So it should be a simple matter to look at the dockets and start from there..... But again we are talking washington state. so its going to be a dead case.
@Ringmaster2000 There were probably only about 3 or 4 THOUSAND cases going on and we don't know if it was a defendant, a plaintiff in a civil suit, a LAWYER who was running late (my best guess is that it was a lawyer) so no, it's not so simple.
"Multiple bomb threats forced eight Washington courthouses to evacuate Thursday afternoon, and officials don't yet know if the threats were coordinated."
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Must have been a coincidence that 8 court house got bomb threats in the same day...probably no coordination {sarcasm}.
 @realdeal599 Yeah, really. I mean, what ARE the chances of eight coordinated threats? Ugh! Really! It's a no-brainer!  ;-)
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What would have happened to the inmates if there would have been a bomb go off?!
@Holly Davis Many times, if there are only pre-trial hearings, etc. the inmate is in a video conference room in the jail, and not in the courthouse. besides, there's lots more going on in Courthouses than just inmate trials - adoption proceedings, civil cases, family court, the Clerk's office, support staff, etc.
 @Holly Davis Was wondering that too.
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 @n9078jk4 Yeah, they make for some awesome desktop wallpaper.
I imagine this idiot will post his deeds on fakebook.
What good does it do to call in a bomb threat to courthouses? It costs the taxpayers mucho dinero every time it happens. Please don't do that anymore. Washington State can't afford one thin dime right now for stupidity. The politicians have plucked the taxpayer carcasses enough. Knock it off! I hope you're caught. :(
 @Funky-Munky Observing reactions to a bomb threat tells the threat maker which routs they when they evacuate, where they employees gather, who responds and in which manner, etc. It doesn't have to be an international or domestic terrorist making the threat.I recall an incident related to our group at a bomb incident management seminar, of a man who suspected his wife of having an affair with a co-worker. The man called in a bomb threat to her place of employment. He made note of where they evacuated to. A couple weeks later he repeated that threat, and observed. He noted that they evacuated to the same location the the same manner.Some time passed and he repeated the threat a third time. Knowing how and where they evacuated, he had no problem knowing where they would be.
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This is just one of any number of reasons a bomb threat is made.
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It costs not only the government, but the private sector as well.
This damned thing ate part of my post, as well as some of the formatting.
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Please insert the following below the above mega-paragraph:Â
His wife and her lover never knew where the bullets came from.
 @Bornhere Thank you for clearing that up, I was wondering what the moral of the story was...lol..."Reset"...
Pacific County Courthouse in South Bend also received a bomb threat call today.
Someone thinks this is funny, and I am sure that a few people who have court coming up are saying Yes blow it up I don't want to go to court. Whoever is doing this needs to be put into a cage at the zoo, that way people can walk by him/her and point and laugh at them. We can show them funny that way.
 @Just my say Someone in the sharp, pointy stick sales business has an opportunity to really clean up by setting up shop outside that cage.
The Adams County Courthouse in Ritzville also received a bomb threat today. Nothing was foundÂ
who ever does these things needs to be tossed in to western state hospital for ever.
@wynooheeman Who ever did this has probably already been at Western Hospital because that is the very place crazed criminals are created by the criminally insane running the place!!!! Check your crazed killings of strangers and loved ones statistics of late--these fools would like you to believe that it is because these people went off their meds - they don't educate you to the fact that these medications make these people worse and that once initiated their minds are changed forever. They don't educate you to the FACT that it is just as dangerous to start these meds as it is to go off these meds. Â Why don't you call WESTERN STATE HOSPITAL and ask them why they are not licensed as a Psychiatric Hospital but hold license as a medical test site with waiver AND then ask them why isn't the DPH in that facility every single day when you have homicides, suicides and people choking to death. Â Ask them who audits the medication regimens of these patients. Â Ask them why they use high doses of risperidone even when the side effects are known to be life altering with the STATE collecting a 4.6 million dollar settlement from Janseen Pharmaceutical because of their less than honest promotion of the drug---CAN YOU SAY KICK BACK!!!! Â It's all about $$$$$$$ for the corrupt psychiatrist, corrupt government, big pharma, corrupt attorneys and YES corrupt judges. AND they all have known this years but ignore because MONEY for the corrupt trumps the quality of life of another.Â
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565 (1969) ("Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds").
@rebelready OK? I need to call western state and make sure that all patients are accounted for. Or have them take your computer away.