Police closed off the Anthropology Annex and Science and Mathematics Learning Center after receiving a call about a “suspicious package” Sunday afternoon.
UNMPD officer Mark Krueger said the package was found padlocked to the side of the Anthropology Annex facing the SMLC. Police closed off both buildings and called the Albuquerque Police Department and the Albuquerque Fire Department.
Krueger said UNMPD responded first but asked for assistance from APD’s bomb squad when they couldn’t open the package. He said the package was probably just a “homeless person’s miscellaneous stuff and trash that they locked up.”
At about 4:30 p.m., the bomb squad confirmed the package was not a threat, about two hours after the initial call to UNMPD.
The LoboAlerts emergency messaging system was not used to notify students.
“We’re not going to put out an alert every time something scary happens on campus, then nobody would listen,” said Dianne Anderson, UNM director of communication. “It would be like ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’”
UNMPD must confirm the threat to students before issuing an alert, Anderson said. This time, she said the police force didn’t feel an alert was necessary.
