Law enforcement officers say the Maryland State House is all clear after a bomb threat was reported late Tuesday afternoon, according to Annapolis Police Chief Ed Jackson.
The Annapolis Police Department received a call shortly before 4 p.m. Tuesday from a woman who claimed to have planted a bomb at the historic gathering place of the Maryland General Assembly, which ended its session in April.
“We are going to go and invoke all of the protocols to make sure the buildings are safe,” Jackson said earlier. “We’ll do everything we can to mitigate the threat to make sure if there is a device, we find it and properly dispose of it to prevent serious emergency.”
As of 4:20 p.m. members of the Anne Arundel County and Annapolis Police Departments had blocked off traffic at the intersection of Bladen and Calvert streets. Cars and pedestrians also were blocked from entering College Avenue from Church Circle.
Multiple K-9 units arrived at the State House as state employees left their buildings across the Capitol Complex.
David Schuhlein, a spokesperson for Senate President Bill Ferguson, said capitol police were the first to alert building occupants of the threat.
At the time, Schuhlein said the threat was “credible” but it’s unclear where or who it’s from, and that the building was immediately evacuated “out of an abundance of caution.”
Tuesday’s threat comes more than two months after an anonymous caller told authorities they would take a gun and “shoot up” the State House.
Made during the legislative session, the threat forced most of those in the State House to evacuate. Politicians heading bill hearings in House and Senate office buildings continued their work, while some legislators, staff members, reporters and Gov. Wes Moore sheltered in place.
Communication and alerts were two of the four corrective actions identified by the Capitol Police in an after-action report to February’s shooter threat.
In the report, obtained by The Capital through a Maryland Public Information Act, police officials suggested ways of “bridging gaps” between state and local agencies, including programming and radio use. The mass notification system was another police recommendation.“
All stakeholders who work or visit State House Complex should be alerted and provided clear direction during crisis events,” the report states.
To do this, Motorola uses geofencing to automatically notify phones in the area. It is unclear which employees in the Capitol Complex were notified of Tuesday’s threat.
Despite the installation of this new system, two state employees told The Capital that they were not informed of the threat.
This article will be updated.
