Facebook employees got the scare of their lives Tuesday evening when police officers stormed the social network's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Apparently, the officers were acting on reports of a threat, but as it turns out in the end, it was just a false alarm. No one was physically hurt in the incident, there was emotional and mental exhaustion plenty.
Around 7PM on Tuesday, the unknown threat on the Facebook campus was reported to the San Francisco Police Department, according to Menlo Park police Commander Dave Bertini, in a statement to San Jose Mercury News. After the report, the call was transferred to officers in Menlo Park, who quickly rushed over to Facebook headquarters and blocked off the entrance to the building.
In the midst of the chaos at hand, Facebook asked its employees to settle down, as police officers searched the premises. Obviously, nothing out of the ordinary was found, and thousands of Facebook employees at the campus can now walk in peace.
"At this point, we're not even sure the call was meant to be for the Menlo Park campus," Bertini said.
Police officers didn't come alone; they were there with dogs and even went as far as to yellow tape the area as if it was a massive crime scene or something terrible waiting to happen. In addition, it is not certain if the officers actually found the real location of the threat, and if they managed to get to the bottom of it.
Quite strange how the cops made such a huge blunder, but at least they were quick to respond despite tackling the wrong location in the process.
Interestingly enough, this incident came days after the city council voted to have Facebook pay the police department $200,000 per year to have a full-time police officer stationed at the campus.
No word on whether or not the Facebook top management was angry at the police for slowing down the progress at a campus that is 6,000 employees strong, nor whether Facebook had a word with the police department in regards to the incident.
