Wyckoff August 3, 2011 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 Officials still probing threat that led to tear gas attack by John Koster Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox said his department and other law enforcement agencies are still investigating the telephoned terroristic threat that led to the cordoning off and evacuation of a block of Wyckoff residences. The incident ended with the lobbing of four rounds of tear gas into what turned out to be an empty house. Chief Fox said that, based on the investigation so far, the terroristic threat appeared to have been maliciously aimed at Parry Aftab, an attorney and international expert on cyber-bulling, as retribution for her investigations into people who abuse the Web. The threat -- which was false, but taken very seriously -- was rated as too sophisticated to have been a simple adolescent prank. On July 23, at 3:38 p.m., a male caller contacted the Wyckoff Police Department and reported that he was inside a Wyckoff house on Hillcrest Avenue. The caller said he had killed four people, wounded a young girl, and was holding two hostages. He demanded $10,000 in cash and a police vehicle to make his escape from the house. Wyckoff and Midland Park police officers converged on the scene, and the Bergen County SWAT team was contacted and responded. The house was cordoned off and neighbors were asked to seek shelter elsewhere and stay off the streets during the emergency. Some neighbors reported terrified searches to locate and round up their children on the brutally hot Saturday afternoon. The July heat set a record at 109 degrees Fahrenheit during the time of the action. Telephone contact could not be made with anyone inside the house, but some of the 30 police officers around the perimeter of the house said they thought they saw shadows and potential movement inside. Aftab, contacted away from the house after about two hours, said that no one should be inside the house at that time. The police ordered whoever was in the surrounded house to come out and give up. After receiving no response, Chief Fox, who was in overall command, authorized the use of tear gas to flush out the house and the Bergen County SWAT team fired four rounds through the windows. About The Wyckoff School Board has accepted the resignation of trustee Diane Sobin and will offer applications to prospective new board members through Aug. 12. Sobin’s resignation was accepted at the July 25 meeting of the Wyckoff Board of Education. She had won her board seat as a write-in candidate in the 2010 Wyckoff Board of Education election, when a spate of resignations left seats uncontested. Prior to her election to the school board, Sobin had run for Wyckoff Township Committee as a maverick Republican against the endorsed candidate of BOE seeks replacement for Sobin the Wyckoff Republican League. She had also urged that applicants for appointed positions in Wyckoff be selected from the township’s Independents and Democrats as well as from League Republicans. Sobin amassed significant votes in her bids for Wyckoff Township Committee, but she did not receive enough ballots to be elected to that body. A financial portfolio manager with two college degrees in topics related to business and finance, Sobin first became locally prominent as one of the leaders of Friends of Wyckoff, an environmental gro up. J. KOSTER a half hour after firing the tear gas, the body-armored and heavily armed SWAT team searched the entire house and found it had been vacant all along. No one was injured during the incident, which lasted four hours. Law enforcement officials are having difficulty tracing the 911 call because the person who initiated the hoax used a computer to disguise the origin of the call. Police believe the computer cloned a telephone number from outside the area. Chief Fox said that, after consultation with other agencies, the Wyckoff threat was similar to several others around the nation aimed at people who have been involved in protesting and exposing cyberbullying and other illegal uses of the computer web. The incident, Fox believes, was not a local prank or publicity stunt, but a sophisticated attempt to punish Aftab for her opposition to cyber-bullying.