RPD’s bomb threat response procedure

(ABC 6 News) – Sunday afternoon, emergency crews received a call from Apache Mall security for a bomb threat.

After law enforcement searched the building, they did not locate anything that posed a threat. However, a 14-year-old boy from Zumbrota now faces a charge of terroristic threats after allegedly calling in the threat to Apache Mall.

RELATED: Teenaged bomb threat suspect “kept in custody of his mom”

Many squad cars were outside the mall including the K-9 unit.

Officer Roussell with the Rochester Police Department works with K-9 Sarge, one of two bomb detecting dogs with the department.

Roussell says the size of the building, like the size of the mall can change how they attack the situation, but they rely heavily on property owners to help them with anything that might be out of the ordinary.

They can also use their bomb-detecting dogs like Sarge to sniff out anything suspicious.

“When we’re walking around with the dogs, giving them the command to search. We’re just looking for behavior changes. When daealing with explosives, the odors are a lot heavier than other odors out there. So, the vapor weight is what we are looking for,” said Officer Roussell.

Officer Roussell says bomb dogs are different than drug dogs. They only train dogs to sniff out one or the other so they know what they are sniffing out.

While the search for a potentially explosive device was going inside, other law enforcement were working simultaneously to identify a suspect.

That suspect was identified and taken into custody Sunday. According to Rochester police, the Zumbrota teenager called the mall and told staff he’d planted a bomb between 1:50 and 1:55 p.m.

The teenager remains in the custody of his mother, police Moilanen said Monday.