Police responded to the area of Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue Thursday morning just before 7:30 a.m., when a Muni driver called the police to report a suspicious package.
By 9:20 a.m., Deputy Chief Mikail Ali said the bomb squad had determined that the device was simply a rice cooker and no explosives were involved. Footage from KRON4 showed the rice cooker left under a bus stop seat.
“It is not a danger,” Ali said. “We’re standing down. It was a rice cooker under a bus stop.”
Police were alerted to the package by a 911 call. Officers responded to the bus stop outside the Goodwill at the corner of Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue, and decided to call in the bomb squad to investigate. The bomb squad arrived and used a robot to handle the bomb, according to witnesses, and then determined it posed no threat.
Police have been on alert and had increased uniformed presence throughout the city after small bombs exploded in New Jersey and New York on Saturday. The bombs found in New York were pressure cooker explosives, according to law enforcement, and the sight of an abandoned rice cooker prompted the heavy police response in San Francisco.
“In light of the events across the country we decided we needed to take this seriously,” Ali said. “You can’t gamble whether someone left it there inadvertently, left it there to create an uncomfortable atmosphere, or otherwise.”
“We always want to take every precaution,” said Officer Giselle Talkoff, a department spokesperson.
By 9:33 a.m. police had begun to open traffic in all directions. Immediately adjacent businesses had been evacuated, police said, and several homeless people were evacuated from their tents nearby. The Department of Homeland Security also responded to the incident.
