Police From 3 Departments Exchange Smoke-Bomb Data

Investigators from three police departments in Orange County have met to exchange information about a series of smoke-bomb attacks during the last two weeks. A similar incident was reported at the main Los Angeles Times building in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The investigators met in Garden Grove, where two of the attacks occurred, but declined to provide any further details of the cases.

“There are some similarities, but we don’t want to divulge them as yet,” said Maureen Haacker, a spokeswoman for the Santa Ana department.

The smoke bombs went off in a Christian bookstore and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. Others were planted at Trinity Broadcasting Network studios in Tustin and in the lobby of the Orange County Register in Santa Ana.

While investigators from Tustin, Santa Ana and Garden Grove were meeting in Garden Grove on Wednesday, a fifth smoke-bomb was discovered in a lobby of the main office of the Los Angeles Times, prompting the evacuation of 1,000 of the newspaper’s employees for two hours.

The device was detonated by the Los Angeles Police Department’s bomb squad, which was summoned to examine a brightly colored gift bag that was left in the lobby.

Los Angeles Detective Steve Spear of the department’s criminal conspiracy section said Wednesday’s incident appeared to be linked to the smoke-bomb attacks in Orange County.

Times security officers said a copy of a Register newspaper story about the incident at that newspaper was attached to the package found in The Times’ lobby. They added that they received a call from someone claiming to have left the device.

Spear said bomb-squad officers, while determining that the package was not capable of doing serious damage, decided to explode it in place because of uncertainty over the chemicals involved.