Police have arrested one person after a security alert at the Leppävaara campus of Laura University of Applied Sciences in Espoo.
Students received an alert message shortly after 11:00 on Friday morning saying “This is not a rehearsal.”
“We have closed the Leppävaara campus due to an imminent threat. if you are currently on campus, stay inside until the authorities instruct otherwise.”
“Campus doors are closed” the alert, sent in Finnish and English, said.
Police arrived on scene at the campus and detained one person.
“All we can tell at the moment is there was a threat, nothing has happened and police have one person in custody and the situation at the school is safe and calm” says Elina Havu from Länsi-Uusimaa Police.
Because of the coronavirus situation with many students distance learning, the Laurea campus was not busy on Friday morning.
“We do have some studies that have workshops and first year students have also some on-campus learning […] we’ve tried to balance the needs of people getting their studies started and the safety issues related to the coronavirus” Teemu Ylikoski, Director of marketing and external relations at Laurea tells News Now Finland.
Leppävaara is Laurea’s biggest campus and they’ve had contingency plans in place for a number of years about what to do in the event of a security situation - including the option of a mass email to students to alert them to an incident and giving further instructions.
“I’d say we are pretty well equipped, so we have a number of different systems some of which we also used today for example for communicating with our staff members to help them gather up everybody in the Leppävaara campus while the police operate” says Ylikoski.
