By Matt Hirsch
Last Friday, Feb. 11, The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, falsely reported details of an “‘active shooter’ threat” on the Brooklyn College campus on Feb. 3. Later, Campus and Community Safety released a statement about the so-called “active shooter,” which turned out to be a baseless threat emailed to a BC professor on Feb. 2.
“On the morning of Feb. 2, 2022, Brooklyn College public safety was notified that a professor had received a poorly written e-mail in which someone threatened to bring a gun to campus for a shooting the next day,” read the statement, noting that public safety contacted police immediately after. The NYPD tracked the message to a hacker overseas that same afternoon, finding “no credible threat” after an investigation.
Public safety had extra officers, including officers from other CUNY colleges, stationed at Brooklyn College’s campus entrances the next day to be cautious. The Daily Mail’s article, however, inflated the event to attack BC President Michelle Anderson for a school policy barring public safety officers from carrying firearms while patrolling campus.
“Brooklyn College’s woke president has banned campus police from carrying guns and during a recent active shooter threat the school was forced to call for help from other CUNY schools which still allow armed patrols,” reads the opening paragraph.
Further on in the article, The Daily Mail claims that BC’s Director of Campus and Community Safety Services, Donald Wenz, told the now-defunct student newspaper, The Excelsior, that, “he was trying to keep New York’s Finest out of sight” though he refused to comment for the Daily Mail’s story.
The story mentioned a shooting from Oct. 2021 on Glenwood Road and Nostrand Avenue, a few blocks away from campus, to emphasize the escalating rate of gun violence in NYC. While shooting rates have risen over the last few years, there has been one shooting reported since 2014 in the 70th Precinct, which includes Brooklyn College, according to NYPD Compstat. The 70th Precinct spans the Ditmas Park, Flatbush, and Midwood sections of South Brooklyn.