{"id":492803,"date":"2026-06-24T06:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T06:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/492803\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T06:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T06:02:13","slug":"unnerving-police-investigate-threat-against-schools-organisations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/492803\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Unnerving’: Police investigate threat against schools, organisations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police are investigating after a series of violent threats were sent to some schools and media organisations across the country today. <\/p>\n

Schools have been evacuated and parents asked to collect their children after the anonymous threats were made on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Auckland City CIB Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin said police were aware of the threats emailed to schools and other institutions, saying they were perceived as “low risk”. <\/p>\n

“The Cybercrime team, supported by staff in other police districts, have initiated an investigation and are working to determine the source of the emails,” he said. <\/p>\n

Anyone with information which could assist police was urged to contact 105 either online, by phone, or anonymously via Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.<\/p>\n

\"Ara<\/p>\n

Ara University IT students Lance Calderon and Charlotte Savage. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Earlier, students at Ara Institute of Canterbury told 1News they received a text saying a threat had been made toward the school, and they should evacuate immediately. <\/p>\n

“We all got a text about 10-15 minutes ago saying that there was a bomb threat on some of the campuses, and we have to evacuate the building immediately,” said IT student Charlotte Savage. <\/p>\n

She said it was “pretty unnerving” and “annoying” as the students were due to begin an exam right before the evacuation. <\/p>\n

“A lot of us have exams today, and a lot of us just want to get that out of the way. Now we’re told to go home, so it’s confusing,” said student Lance Calderon. <\/p>\n

Another student Xzayda Hauwai said: “It sucks. It’s the end of the semester and its messing up all of our turn-in dates, and now we have something weird happening. It’s just kind of annoying that all of our final things just can’t be turned in.” <\/p>\n

“We have exams literally all through this week, and it’s not good at all. Yup, really messed up,” said Tobii McCauley. <\/p>\n

Several media organisations, including RNZ and the NZ Herald, reported receiving threats. <\/p>\n

Tauranga City Council was also evacuated from its Devonport Rd building due to a threat, Local Democracy reported. <\/p>\n

\"Tauranga<\/p>\n

Tauranga City Council staff on Devonport Rd after the administration building was evacuated. (Source: Local Democracy Reporting)<\/p>\n

Tauranga Mayor Mahe Drysdale told LDR the threat was \u201cmost likely a hoax\u201d, but it had to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve had a bomb threat to the building. We\u2019ve spoken to police,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve got our teams looking at CCTV footage… to try to understand. It\u2019s most likely a hoax, however, we\u2019ve got to protect our staff and keep everyone safe as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the plan was to evacuate the building.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s a sensible thing to do, so we can go through and have a check as to whether there\u2019s anything untoward.”<\/p>\n

The evacuation occurred during the lunch break of a council meeting.<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Education has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police are investigating after a series of violent threats were sent to some schools and media organisations across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,84,42,1073,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-492803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-media","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}