Police Blow Up Suspicious Package in Silver Lake Shopping Center [Photos]

A suspicious package found in a shopping mall on Glendale Boulevard in Silver Lake Wednesday afternoon turned out to be no threat, according to officers at the scene.

Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad officers sent in a robot and eventually exploded what turned out to be, according to a City News Service report, a "container."

The Los Angeles Times reports that footage shot by a KTLA helicopter above the scene appears to show the device to be some kind of pressure cooker or pot, possibly like the the ones used in the Boston bombings.

LAPD Northeast Division officers responded to a call about 12:20 p.m. Wednesday regarding the package.

Police then cordoned off the area to conduct the investigation, diverting traffic from parts of Glendale Boulevard, Fletcher Drive, and Silver Lake Boulevard.

Employees and patrons in Starbuck's, Ralph's, CVS and several other stores in the mall and next to it were evacuated, with no one allowed into the area.

The displaced employees sat on curbs and sidewalks along the perimeter, some streaming live television updates about the investigation on their phones.

One Ralph's employee, who refused to provide her name, did tell us that Starbuck's employees were the first to be evacuated and that the situation was handled very calmly by managers and police.

The Citibank at the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Silver Lake Boulevard remained open, though extremely empty, during the incident.

Police finally allowed traffic back into the area around 2:35 p.m.

The scare was one of five that police responded to Tuesday, said Richard French of LAPD Media Relations, all without incident.

The others were at UCLA, in Venice, in the San Fernando Valley, and in the Harbor area at a nature center.

"People are on heightened alert because of what happened Monday in Boston," French said.