Every game day, police say, is an opportunity to practice evacuating LSU's campus of 30,000 students, as it was after the bomb threat.
Officers couldn't be pre-positioned as they normally would be and people coming in to pick up children at day care and lab schools slowed the process. Still, LSU Police Chief Lawrence Rabalais said campus was cleared about an hour and 20 minutes after an alert went out.
Rabalais said the relationships between law enforcement agencies developed over years of handling the Tiger football crowd also contributed to the arrest of a suspect within 48 hours of the threat call.
"It starts with our football process, and we try to take that model into other criminal activity on campus," Rabalais said. "Whether it's a double homicide or a bomb threat, ... we tend to come together as a family, and as a team, and do what needs to be done."
The suspect, William Bouvay, Jr. of Baton Rouge, 42, is a familiar face. Since 2001, Bouvay has been arrested by city, parish, and campus police more than half a dozen times on charges ranging from harassing phone calls to attempted second degree murder.