Bomb Squad Called to Local Environmental Firm

The UC Berkeley Police Department’s Bomb Squad was called to the office of a local environmental nonprofit firm Thursday afternoon on a report of a suspicious package.

After investigating the contents of the package, which was mailed to the office of Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) at 187 East Blithedale in a padded yellow envelope, law enforcement officials determined that while the package was not dangerous, it remained suspicious and worthy of additional investigation.

“Better safe than sorry,” Detective Sgt Paul Wrapp said about his department’s decision to call out the bomb squad.

Deborah Moskowitz, the office manager at RRI, said she retrieved the company’s mail Thursday afternoon and found the padded envelope addressed to RRI with an unknown return address and “a square inside a box” inside. Police were called to the scene at around 3 p.m., Wrapp said.

Police evacuated the three people in the RRI office and called the bomb squad at 5 p.m., Wrapp said. They took an X-ray of the package and “determined it to be safe,” he said.

Wrapp declined to comment on the contents of the package but said the type of package, the fact that it was mailed to RRI and its contents caused police to investigate even though it was deemed safe.

RRI was founded in 1985 by environmentalist Huey Johnson, the former resources secretary of the state of California under the first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown from 1978-1982. The firm develops a wide range environmental programs around the globe.