UC Berkeley lifts lockdown over threat; classes canceled

The University of California, Berkeley issued an all-clear more than four hours after ordering a campuswide lockdown Thursday prompted by threats made by an individual against people at the university.

The person who made the threats was located off-campus by university police who said the security situation had been addressed and the individual posed no immediate threat, said Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley.

Mogulof said the person is affiliated with the university and had made “credible threats of violence towards other, specific individuals who work or learn at the university.”

Mogulof said he couldn’t say whether the person who made the threats was armed or had been arrested or whether those threatened were students, faculty, or university workers.

“We have consciously and specifically chosen not to provide any additional information about whether this individual is a student, staff member, or faculty and we’ve consciously decided not to provide any additional information about the individual’s current status or location out of respect for the privacy of the individual involved, as well as others,” he said.

University police first learned of the threats Thursday morning and ordered the lockdown to search and secure the campus, Mogulof said.

Police had said they were looking for a person trying to hurt specific people on campus but that it was not an active shooter situation.

Police and school officials asked students to shelter indoors and stay away from doors and windows. In-person classes were canceled for the day, and libraries, cafeterias, parking garages and other university facilities were closed.

The person was located several hours later and police lifted the lockdown and quickly followed it with an all-clear order. Those forced to shelter indoors and away from doors and windows were asked to leave campus in an orderly way.

In-person classes will resume Friday but all university facilities had already reopened Thursday, Mogulof said.

UC Berkeley, which is across the bay from San Francisco, has more than 60,000 students, staff and faculty.

Some neighboring schools also closed their gates for a few hours, following the lockdown at UC Berkeley.

Berkeley Unified School District said it had placed six schools on a “soft lockdown” out of an abundance of caution, because of their proximity to the college campus. A soft lockdown means that all gates and doors to a school are locked but students can move around freely inside school buildings, said Trish McDermott, spokeswoman for Berkeley Unified.

A class of second graders on a field trip to the university campus when the lockdown was issued sheltered in place, McDermott said.

“They are safe and fine and we’ve reached out to parents and caregivers,” she said.