A man has been arrested after allegedly making a threatening phone call warning of an incident on Bourke St.<\/p>\n
The verbal threat was made on Thursday afternoon and prompted police to ramp up patrols in the city.<\/p>\n
Critical Incident Response Team and uniform officers arrested a man at a McDonald\u2019s outlet on Swanston St just after 7.30pm.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old man of no fixed address was being interviewed at Melbourne West Police Station on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s alleged the man made a phone call to Channel 9 in Sydney, threatening of an incident on Bourke Street.<\/p>\n
Channel 9 then contacted Crime Stoppers.<\/p>\n
The exact nature of the call remains under investigation however Victoria Police said the public was never in danger.<\/p>\n
Inspector Dale Huntington said people should not be concerned about traveling into the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt no stage was the public, whether in the CBD or coming into the CBD, at any time threatened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never any kind of action happening towards any individual or any groups at any location.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inspector Huntington said police treat all threats with the same severity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny threat, no matter what it is, we take very seriously,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur whole aim was to identify who this individual was, and also to locate and arrest and understand what this threat was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police said in an earlier statement that patrols were increased across the CBD \u201cas a precaution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melbourne City Council issued a text message to staff on Thursday night warning them to avoid Bourke St.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictoria Police have advised us of the possible threat of an incident occurring on Bourke Street tonight, Thursday 21 May,\u201d the council wrote in a text message. <\/p>\n
\u201cPlease be alert and avoid the area after 7pm tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inspector Huntington addressed the council\u2019s warning to staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t answer what the council does, but anyone who sends out a safety message, that is fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will work with the council on how that message went out because it wasn\u2019t a policing message to go out to all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been arrested after allegedly making a threatening phone call warning of an incident on Bourke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,133,5050,260,120,5255,11645,15743,68],"class_list":["post-15875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-david-geraghty","tag-melbourne","tag-oceania","tag-police-officers","tag-police-operation","tag-verbal-threat","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}