Sen. Charles Schumer urges FCC to help solve JCC bomb threats
Published March 1, 2017
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer speaking with the media at the Capitol building, Jan. 31, 2017. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer exhorted the Federal Communications Commission to provide Jewish institutions with caller information to help solve a recent string of bomb threats.
Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader from New York, sent a letter on Wednesday — two days after 29 JCCs and Jewish schools across the country received called-in bomb threats — to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asking him to grant the targeted institutions special waivers allowing them to work with law enforcement to access caller ID information.
His statement called the waiver “critical.”
“All communities and entities targeted by intimidation and fear deserve access to all of the tools needed to ensure these criminals are brought to justice,” Schumer said.
The veteran senator referenced a string of threatening phone calls made last year to the Middletown School District in his state. At Schumer’s request, the FCC granted the district a waiver to access caller information about the perpetrators.
Monday’s threats represented the fifth such incident in less than two months. In total, 89 bomb threats have been called in this year to 72 Jewish institutions in 30 U.S. states and one Canadian province, according to the JCC Association of North America.
