A bomb threat made last Friday evening prompted USM police to search the Portland campus. No buildings were evacuated, and the community wasn’t notified of the threat, which officials deemed a prank.
“There was nothing to suggest there was a credible threat,” said USM spokesman Bob Caswell.
According to Caswell, the call was made to campus police sometime after 5 p.m. on Friday, March 19. “A male caller told USM police he had overheard someone say there was a bomb on the Portland campus and then he hung up,” Caswell said.
The caller didn’t specify where on campus he thought the bomb was.
The call was made from a payphone at Anania’s Variety, a convenience store on outer Washington Avenue, Caswell said. Amanda Dorothy, a manager at Anania’s, said the store has no security camera that could have caught the caller.
“USM police did a check of all buildings to see if they could notice anything out of place,” said Caswell. “They had no reports of anyone doing anything suspicious.”
According to Caswell, USM students and employees weren’t notified because the call came from a third party who provided no details, and there were few classes in session on the Portland campus.
According to Registrar Steve Rand, roughly 250 students were in class on the Portland campus at the time the call was placed. The figure doesn’t include employees or students who were on campus but not in class. The call came on the last day of classes before a weeklong spring break.
Last Friday’s call was the university’s first since a rash of bomb threats that plagued the school in 2006 and 2007. Altogether, there were nine separate bomb threats to USM during the 2006-2007 school year, and four threats made in the fall of 2007.
“It really got maddening and disruptive. They were coming fast and furiously for a while,” said Caswell. “A lot of times we called into Portland Police to help with traffic,” from thousands of students and employees leaving the school at the same time.
Late in the fall semester of 2006, USM hired Timothy S. Culbert, a retired member of the Maine State Police bomb squad to train USM police and officials in how to handle the bomb threats. He advised the university not evacuate the campus unless a specific threat is made, said Caswell.
Two former students, Erin Grade of Rockland and Geneva Benner of Thomaston, were convicted in March of 2008 for their involvement in a threat made on Dec. 4, 2006.
A representative from the USM Police was not immediately available Tuesday afternoon.
“It probably is not under further investigation, there was a fair amount of investigation that went on at the time,” said Craig Hutchinson, vice-president of student and university life. Hutchinson is the head of the Critical Incident Response Team, the group that determines the response to potential threats to USM. The team is comprised of several staff and faculty from various departments. Caswell also serves on the team.
“Our response protocol is different for a call that is almost certainly a hoax, or a low-threat. This clearly qualified as one,” he said.