Police cordoned off Facebook's headquarters Tuesday night after receiving a security threat tip off that eventually turned out be false.
According to San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Police Department received threat information around 7 p.m. on Tuesday and passed it on to the Menlo Park Police who descended on the social media giant's headquarters.
Quoting Menlo Park Police Commander Dave Bertini, Washington Post said that the campus was locked down and the employees were asked to stay put before the threat could be verified. At about 8:30 p.m., the police allowed the employees to leave when it found that there was no real threat.
"At this point, we're not even sure the call was meant to be for the Menlo Park campus," Bertini told Mercury News.
Mercury News further reported that the search on the campus did not yield anything, but officials were tightlipped about revealing the nature of the threat or other details pertaining to the alert. The San Francisco Chronicle said in a blog post that the alert was for a bomb threat and the police were following standard operating procedures.
The Washington Post reported that a few thousand employees work at Facebook headquarters, though it was not know how many were on campus when the police arrived. However Facebook had to shuttle its employees who were delayed by the search operations at 1 Hacker Way in Northern California. The address of the company's main campus at 1601 William Avenue which was a Sun Microsystems campus, was renamed "1 Hacker Way" when FB took over.
San Francisco Chronicle also reported that Facebook would soon have a dedicated officer stationed near its headquarters as the company agreed to the pay $ 200,000 to the city every year for three years.
Quoting an earlier San Jose Mercury News report, SF Chronicle said, "The officer's duties will include being a first responder to incidents in the area and a liaison with schools and businesses to create emergency plans - including violent intruder drills at the various schools and large business campuses in the area."
