The Daytona Beach Police Department (DBPD) is working with various law enforcement agencies – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – as investigators look into threats made across the United States today (January 31, 2022) at various Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU).
This nationwide incident appears to have started around January 4, 2022 when six different HBCU campuses received threats. Today, an additional seven different campuses were targeted, including Bethune-Cookman University (BCU) in Daytona Beach.
The call which prompted today’s measures at BCU came into Volusia County emergency dispatch at 4:32 this morning, leading DBPD to quickly investigate and work with campus security to implement a campus-wide lockdown. DBPD officers, with the assistance of the Volusia Sheriff’s Office (VSO), searched building-by-building for any potential threat.
That search ended around 11:00 a.m. with no explosive device discovered.
The call which came into Volusia County emergency dispatch also indicated that there was an active shooter threat on the campus as well as an explosive device threat. The shooting threat, according to the call, was expected to happen around lunchtime.
It’s not clear at this point who is responsible for making the call about this unfounded threat, but it appears to be a hate group who are specifically targeting African Americans. We will refer any questions about that portion of the investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the meantime, we will continue to actively investigate this incident.
For precautionary reasons, we ask the public and anyone who planned to go onto the BCU campus today – including students, faculty and employees – to stay away from the campus. Anyone on campus is permitted to leave.
Classes have been canceled for the day at BCU as DBPD maintains a heavy and visible police presence on campus, especially at entry and exit points. Movement on campus will also be restricted for at least the rest of today and may be extended after today.