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Security theater martial law and a tale that trumps every cop-n-donut joke ever
- Shivetya 14y agoOkay, I am pretty amazed about the Dunkin Donuts exception. That is one of those items so bizarre you know it has to be real. That being said, it was definitely an over reaction. That will take a few weeks if not months to get sorted out as the analysis kicks in. I am more curious who raises a stink as opposed to those who don't.
- hga 14y agoI'm not so sure. Compared to the other examples he lists, London was suicide bombers so they were, ahem, finished with their deeds, and the other locations were well armed (even Maryland). By long standing public policy there are very few guns, and almost no (legal) handguns owned by the people of Massachusetts (if they were honest the government would stop using the symbol and likeness of a Minuteman). In a region that's deliberately filled with sitting ducks as it were, "sheltering in place" was perhaps the best thing to do. Minus of course what I've heard is the error in drawing the door to door search perimeter just a little short of where the suspect managed to run; not security theater but an honest but very embarrassing failure.
- mogrim 14y agoAfter the Madrid bombings they didn't shut the city down, and they weren't suicide bombers. They didn't shut London down during the IRA bombing attacks during the 80s either. And that's two examples I've lived through. TBH I find it hard to think of a single example of a terrorist bombing leading to a city shutdown, apart from this one. It makes clear sense to shut down a local neighbourhood, a couple of streets... but a whole city??? WTF???
- wahnfrieden 14y agoThe city was not shut down after the bombing. It was not until the events that happened days later that it was. So you cannot just compare the bombing itself without being facetious.
- barking 14y agoIIRC they put a 'ring of steel' around the financial distict of London ('the city') in the early 90s as a way of protecting it from IRA attacks. Also the IRA gave warnings so that despite truck size bombs the loss of life was relatively small (1 in the Bishopsgate bomb in '93) Saying you 'lived through' that is a bit dramatic. A lot of us did and it meant nothing more than reading about it in the paper same as everyone else.
- hga 14y agoMore than a bit of revisionism here; sure, that was often the pattern but not always successful in preventing deaths or hundreds of injuries per bombing, and they were less fastidious against regieme targets: attempting to assasinate Thacher and her cabinet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing, 5 killed), soldiers and spectators at Hyde Park and Regent's Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_and_Regent%27s_Park_bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Park_and_Regent%27s_Park_b...), etc. Again from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_campaign_1969%E2%80%931997#Attacks_outside_Northern_Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Ar...): "During the IRA's 25 year campaign in England, 115 deaths and 2,134 injuries were reported, from a total of almost 500 attacks. Malcom Sutton reports 125 fatalities in Britain, 68 civilians, 50 members of the security forces and 7 paramilitaries." By the latter count more civilians than even theoretically legitimate targets.
- barking 14y agoI fail to see how my post was revisionistic. Your own statistics suggest that there was about 1 fatality for every 4 attacks. And that was over a 20 year period. That was the only point I was making and it was in response to another poster's comment about how London was not locked-down in response. Locking-down London would have been ridiculous. In fact the IRA would have viewed that as a victory. The Boston situation was very different in almost every aspect.
- csixty4 14y agoI'm not amazed, No doubt the BPD put in a lot of overtime this week already, and I'm sure having a place close by for coffee and sweets must have felt great. Plus, DD is as Boston as you can get. Maybe a little reminder of what they were out there for.
- neltnerb 14y agoI suspect that the people working at the Dunking Donuts were proud to be able to support the police officers working 18 hour shifts to get the guy! We take care of each other in Boston.
- callahad 14y agoDunkin' Donuts stores in Watertown open between 5:00 AM and 6:00 AM. The MBTA suspended transit at 5:30 AM. Ergo, the stores were already staffed and/or open when the lockdown went into effect. For those employees, "shelter in place" meant staying in the store. Which in many cases had already opened for the morning. It's not a huge leap from that to staying open.
- bsg75 14y agoBeing rational will not help drive blog views.
- dfc 14y agoI submitted this link but I am not sure what the deal is with the author mentioning military golf courses. The first round of golf that I ever played was with my father at MCBH Kaneohe. For service members stationed on oahu the greens fees at the civilian golf courses can be exorbitant. There is no way my father could have afforded to take me out golfing three or four times at a civilian course during my visit. Are people surprised to hear that the military has their own golf courses? They also have their own grocery stores, gyms and movie theaters.
- blaines 14y agoYeah the author was definitely off topic there. Maybe they are unaware of how hard it can be to move around the world at a moments notice. I believe golf courses and the other facilities are hugely beneficial to our service members and are well deserved.
- bridgeyman 14y agoEveryone was pretty scared after the marathon bombing. In the days after, there were tons of bomb warnings as everyone reported anything even semi-suspicious. My neighbors even reported an Amazon package for me because it wasn't delivered by UPS! Once there was a cop killed on our campus, followed by robberies and a car chase with bombs, things were looking pretty grim. If they weren't caught, the next few weeks would have felt very unsafe. After the drama with the lockdown and the suspects being caught then the atmosphere went from really insecure to people actually celebrating. If it was just a piece of theater, it was pretty effective.
- hga 14y agoHis comparison to the Beltway sniper is apropos. I happen to be someone who's connected to both, one of my stomping grounds was Building 20 where I founded a student run computing center with the Logo Lab's surplus PDP-11/45, serial number 413 (so 313th made), the Stata Center replaced it. And the woman killed in Virginia at the Home Depot ... well, that was "my" Home Depot, as well as the location of a favorite Chinese restaurant, it was even pretty easy to figure out where the sniper likely fired from. Were we "scared" in the D.C. region? You better believe it, I certainly didn't go outside without wearing my body armor and carrying my handgun, but we didn't shut down the region. Then again, look at the above, Virginia is shall issue and well armed, Maryland is seldom issue but still well armed, Massachusetts has done just about everything it can to disarm its population....
- kvb 14y agoI don't think it's apropos at all. The snipers were killing individuals, not maiming hundreds at a time. And I don't see how the level of gun ownership matters (in either case). How was carrying your handgun going to help you if the sniper shot at you? How would it have helped MA residents?
- hga 14y agoAt me, and hit me? None. Only one shot? Based on what I've read, you can never locate the source, especially since the sonic boom of a supersonic projectile is in a likely different direction. But it did put a limit on what they could achieve. If they'd attempted a mass shooting and then to run away, if not immediately taken down I would have found cover and shot back. And probably wouldn't have been alone. They went to great and successful lengths to be covert (didn't help that the guy leading the hunt was an idiot and they did the usual "it's got to be a white man" profiling vs. the Sudden Jihad Syndrome it turned out to be ... the police even stopped them once, but they obviously weren't enemies of the state...). You can't rule out the area being well armed as one of the reasons. As for MA, they were armed, and since they had to get around the law to get that way almost certainly knew if they broke into a house or apartment the residents couldn't have fought back. My big fear during the manhunt was that the police would bust into a dwelling and find the suspect plus the dead bodies of the residents....
- kevincennis 14y agoI keep hearing people claim that this was an overreaction, and frankly, it sort of confuses me. Here's what we know happened before the lockdown: - These two suspects allegedly planted two bombs that killed three and injured over 170 others. - These two suspects allegedly killed an MIT police officer. - These two suspects allegedly carjacked an SUV and held its driver captive for some time. - During a chase with police, these suspects allegedly threw homemade explosive devices at law enforcement. What we don't seem to know yet (and definitely didn't at the time): - Did they have more explosives? There's certainly reason to believe they may have. - Did they have other attacks planned? We don't know one way or the other, and that's sort of the point. I really don't think it's unreasonable that given what we knew, and especially what we didn't, residents of Boston (myself included) were asked to stay indoors while authorities attempted to locate suspect #2. Remember, they didn't lock the city down immediately after the bombing. They did it after what the Boston police commissioner is calling the "execution" of an MIT police officer, a carjacking, multiple IED detonations (or attempted detonations, I'm not totally clear), and a shootout with police in a residential neighborhood.
- wtvanhest 14y agoFurther, I live in Boston and they didn't say you couldn't go outside, they just advised you not to. I walked across the Boston Common where people were playing with their dogs and grabbed a coffee from the coffee shop. People from outside of Boston probably didn't realize it, but it was really just 1 neighborhood locked down with the mass transit everywhere else not working. Weird day? Yes! Martial law? No.
- herewego 14y agoI'm in Boston and I completely agree. It was a 20 block area, which is not even close to the entirety of Boston and it's surrounding neighbourhoods.
- bricestacey 14y agoI went out too. Lots of shops, restaurants, bars still open in North End area.
- jeffcouturier 14y agoThis skips one critical fact that invalidates the entire premise of the post. The lockdown had little to do with public safety and everything to do with a manhunt. The city was shut down to prevent the suspect from getting out, not to protect people.
- blaines 14y agoDid they say that when asking people to stay home or did they tell people they would be safer at home?
- bridgeyman 14y agoI think public safety was part of it. It pretty much eliminated the easy targets. There weren't any crowded places to plant a bomb.
- gambler 14y agoHow does this invalidate the premise of the post?
- youngerdryas 14y agoTypical tone deaf nerd rage. If Bostonians didn't agree with the lockdown we would have likely ignored it, we are not particularly obedient.
- brown9-2 14y agoYour second sentence is a good point - it was a request from the government, not a demand.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoI think that may be a distinction without a difference. All public transit was shut down. In Watertown specifically businesses were not allowed to open and anyone in a car was subject to being swarmed by heavily armed police and taken into questioning. Edit: clarified the parts that were specifically about Watertown vs. Boston as a whole.
- thoughtsimple 14y agoBS. Do you have anything to support that ridiculous claim?
- bsg75 14y ago> Anyone in a car was subject to being swarmed by heavily armed police and taken into questioning. Citations? Examples?
- herewego 14y agoYou're wrong. I live in Boston. The MBTA was shut down, but businesses were allowed to open (my employer was), and people weren't getting "swarmed" by any means.
- csixty4 14y agoI think the only businesses forced closed were in Watertown. For the rest of the city, the BPD had this to say on Twitter: "#CommunityAlert: Per MEMA – People who went to work this morning not expected to remain there. Workers encouraged to return home." That sounds very different from "not allowed to open".
- stefantalpalaru 14y agoMillions of people stayed at home an entire day, frightened, watching the news and waiting for a 19 year old to be captured by a heavily militarized police force? In the 21st century? During peace time? In a first world country?
- thoughtsimple 14y agoI wasn't frightened. I considered it the best, most effective way of helping Law enforcement to do their jobs. Which, BTW worked. One day of lockdown and the crisis was over. Compare that to the DC snipers referenced in the article.
- stefantalpalaru 14y agoWill you be willing to help law enforcement again by staying in your home each time an armed suspect is on the run?
- bsg75 14y agoOn the rare occurrence that the suspect is armed with and has deployed homemade explosive devices on two separate occasions, the first in a very public setting? Yes.
- jrockway 14y agoThen the terrorists have won. Now all anyone needs to do to cost the economy a billion dollars is fill a pressure cooker with some marbles and black powder. Instead of killing 3 people, he destroys the lifetime value of hundreds. It's like DNS amplification attacks, but in real life. Great...
- afterburner 14y agoThey caught the guys within days, and the suspects didn't get very far at all. I'm pretty sure Boston, and all its residents, won. If the US can't afford billions of dollars to prevent the murder of potentially dozens more innocents and the extremely quick capture of such dangerous criminals, then what the heck is the point of all that money.
- pivo 14y agoWe weren't forced to stay at home, nobody was arrested for being on the street, it was entirely voluntary. I think most people here were pretty happy with the outcome too. I simply don't have anything to complain about with regard to how the city handled the situation. In fact, that both suspects were accounted for by the end of the day was for me almost too good to be true.
- kevincennis 14y agoAgreed. This seems to be the general attitude of most people who were actually here. I was about a mile south of all of this in Brighton, and I can tell you that nobody I spoke with felt particularly scared. It was more like "let's stay inside and let them find this guy".
- thoughtsimple 14y agoExactly. Very expertly handled by all involved. Including apprehending the suspect without killing him. This guy killed an 8 year old and two young women and a fellow officer yet he is still alive. Remarkable restraint in my opinion.
- csixty4 14y agoYeah. People were still walking their dogs. My wife & I went out for a calzone at 12:30 and the place was packed. I don't think a single person I talked to online or off was "afraid". We were just staying out of the way, and with the T shut down there wasn't much to go out & do anyway.
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- bridgeyman 14y agoThis was all just a tactic to raise the fertility rates in Boston. 9 months from now we will experience The Great Boston Baby Boom.
- tunesmith 14y agoThis is ridiculous. It wasn't martial law security theater - it was unprecedented community-level collaboration. Security forces had absolutely no way to force/require the citizens to stay in, and probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective in coordinating if the citizens hadn't helped out.
- hga 14y agoAll their efforts and "coordinating" were a complete and total failure. Repeating again, a point made in the original, it was only after the shelter in place request/implicit order (after Dornan in California it's take it as a "if you want to stay unperforated, stay indoors..." sort of "request": http://12160.info/forum/topics/two-women-shot-in-manhunt-for-ex-lapd-cop?commentId=2649739%3AComment%3A1116109 http://12160.info/forum/topics/two-women-shot-in-manhunt-for...) was lifted that a Massachusettes subject exited his house, noticed something was amiss and called the police.
- afterburner 14y agoAnd it was the lockdown that prevented the suspect from getting anywhere until that point.
- usea 14y agoWhat was gained by making it difficult for the suspect to move for a day? Increased probability of him bleeding out? Scenario 1) No lockdown. Suspect is discovered immediately by homeowner. Scenario 2) Lockdown. Suspect hides for a day, and is discovered immediately when the lockdown is over. What is gained in scenario 2? Specifically, when weighed against the cost of the lockdown.
- afterburner 14y agoWhat if the resident hadn't been at home because he/she went to work as normal? What if without a lockdown the search radius widens so much that the suspect is able to escape a great distance? How on earth can you rely on the suspect being too injured to move? Don't you think the lockdown was part of the reason the suspect was forced to hide in the first place, and part of the reason the resident was present and primed for anything different going on?
- thoughtsimple 14y agoI lost a lot of respect for popehat after reading that. How do you measure the cost of people's lives? The shelter in place request was just that, a request. It was to help law enforcement do their jobs. It clearly worked. He makes reference to the DC snipers but fails to mention the cost of having those terrorists free for weeks. In Boston both men were caught in a matter of days with no more civilians hurt. I'll take Boston's solution over that of DC's. He also doesn't seem to take into account the very large number of non-fatal injuries sustained. And the potential for even more given the use of explosives. Trying to minimize the risk by discounting the injuries and only considering fatalities is pretty shallow analysis. Also making light of the police and donuts does not improve my opinion of his stance.
- msabalau 14y agoIndeed. Our governor recommended that people stay in their homes, and that businesses shut down. In exactly the way that he earlier in the year he recommended that they do so in a big snowstorm, both for safety and so that the streets could be effectively cleared. Indeed, in the snowstorm case was more restrictive, as one could have been theoretically fined for driving (although it was made clear that this wasn't something which there was any intent to pursue). People by and large accommodated yesterdays request because it seemed reasonable. Also it gave them a chance to stay home with their loved ones and follow the news. Finally, I'd observe that terrorists who throw bombs and fire weapons in the street are scary. In any event, there were some people on the streets yesterday, just not many. If someone actually feels that their rights were actually abridged, for example if they were arrested for assembling outside, they have recourse to the courts, and I'd be happy to consider donating to their legal fund. And, of course, should someone feel that this was mishandled as a case of public policy, they are welcome to run on that platform and make that case.
- dspeyer 14y agoYou have to be willing to measure the cost of lives. No one likes doing it, but there's always opportunities to spend a lot of money to save a few lives, and a limited amount of money. If you don't make tradeoffs intelligently and deliberately, you wind up trading many lives for few lives.
- rtpg 14y agoEverything that mentions the number of deaths seems to forget the fact that this guy didn't 'just' kill 4 people, he also injured over 150 people (a lot of missing legs on those injuries too...) There's a huge difference with the other examples. Namely in how indiscriminate it all is.
- goostavos 14y agoAgreed. Seems to be purposefully left out to support his position. The snipers death toll was, what, 7% of the total number of injuries at Boston? Once you factor in why bombs are terrible the comparison falls apart a bit in my opinion.
- aptwebapps 14y agoThe other cost is that is a sort of reward for the terrorists to overreact like this.
- thoughtsimple 14y agoOr perhaps future terrorists will decide that Boston is too small and cohesive a community to attack. Next time they go to a city where they have more chance of sneaking off in a crowd. I'm not one to think that bombers of civilians are really that brave.
- aptwebapps 14y ago"Or perhaps future terrorists will decide that Boston is too small and cohesive a community to attack." Because of the shutdown? That was what I was talking about. If so, I'm not sure that I see it. At any rate, I was just making the standard "don't let the terrorists win" argument.
- revelation 14y agoApparently the holy scripture, aka the constitution, isn't worth the paper it was written on. Soldiers in cities? That shit would not fly here. You get a congressional inquiry for letting AWACS control the air.
- thoughtsimple 14y agoPolice. Not soldiers. Unless you mean the soldiers that ran the marathon with full packs and then helped the first responders after the blasts.
- revelation 14y agohttp://25.media.tumblr.com/b2af26395aeac454b95f064a48155d0e/tumblr_mli8zmcJtq1r3rsfmo1_1280.jpg http://25.media.tumblr.com/b2af26395aeac454b95f064a48155d0e/... These look like soldiers. I think theres another one with Humvees.
- thoughtsimple 14y agoPolice in SWAT gear.
- callahad 14y agoMembers of the Massachusetts National Guard were on hand during the Marathon, and assisted during the subsequent lockdown and manhunt, at the request of the Boston Police. Cite: http://www.army.mil/article/101170/ http://www.army.mil/article/101170/ (Note: I do not disagree with the Guard's involvement; just correcting the misstatement that military were not involved.)
- Evbn 14y agoWTF do you think the purpose of the National Guard is? A weekend exercise program?
- twistedpair 14y agoIt was mostly Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police, and SWAT and local police from across the state. The only military was the Mass National Guard with air support in the visual search. Military bomb search and disposal units were also involved.
- pvnick 14y agoThat article was in very poor taste. I'm typically a libertarian, anti big government, with a slight conspiracy theorist side to me, but I was thrilled to see the well-coordinated and well-executed manhunt that captured the suspect alive. It was a rare moment, I was in full "'MURICA" mode yesterday. To complain about the process is just contrarian nonsense.
- peterjancelis 14y agoTotally agreed. The blackhawk helicopters flying over Boston were a clear breach of Posse Comitatus and the warrantless searches (or self-warranted, any type not warranted by a judge) was a clear breach of the 4th amendment.
- wahnfrieden 14y agoSearch without warrant just means evidence cannot be used in court. Are you a lawyer?
- kvb 14y agoWhich warrantless searches? Weren't houses only searched with their owners' consent?
- peterjancelis 14y agoThere are pictures of citizens leaving their houses with hands in the air. Explain to me how this does not constutite 'under duress'.
- kvb 14y agoI haven't heard any stories of people whose houses were searched in a way that they were uncomfortable with. Have you?
- bsg75 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley "Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)[1], was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace."
- peterjancelis 14y agoSurely pubic airspace does not include the interior of homes?
- begurken 14y agoExpect further irrational responses like the Boston Lockdown, while factors that kill several orders of magnitude more people continue to be ignored. What is worse is that the conditions for this aren't top-down driven. In aggregate, Americans seem to me to be addicted to fear, are hopelessly unable to think about risk, and want security theatre. Security theatre needn't be implemented rationally, because its purpose is to be theatre, not to be effective. The thing that people should fear is the secondary effects of security theatre. To implement security theatre, you need most of the apparatus of a police state (i.e. large numbers of police that can be mobilized at a moments notice for flimsy reasons). The mindset supporting such theatre also allows politicians to engage in military adventurism in the name of 'safety' or 'freedom'. It's obvious at this time that clear statistics and rational, measured approaches to risk don't sway people. I suspect about the only thing that might at this point is satire. The whole security theatre effect is driven by emotion, and people dislike being the butt of jokes more than they like the rush they get from fear. Perhaps we can invent some perjorative like 'wingnut' or 'moonbat', but for fear junkies, then make jokes about them.
- considerthis 14y agoCost analysis here: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/04/what-will-boston-lockdown-cost-city/5350 http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/04/what-will-...
- twistedpair 14y agoWhat's the cost analysis of successful terrorist attacks? Remember, we're talking cost/benefit here. One verses the other. 9/11 was in the trillions (i.e. property loss, insurance pay outs, market collapses, wars.) The markets this week were dropping in response to Boston, that's on the order of billions. Count all the cancelled events during the week (not talking about Friday's public safety) and people not going out and conducting commerce and you're in the millions. Compare that to the cost of say 20 lives? He had home made bombs on his person the last the police had seen him. His brother had a suicide vest. What if the MBTA was running and he blew up a bus full of souls? Worth $100M? I bet the negative market reaction would have been far greater than that. Still, a crucial flaw in these calculations is that most of the "lost" business will be made up. People will go out and do more than their share of commerce today. There are sandwiches on Friday that won't be sold and floors that were not cleaned, but big ticket items were only demurred and will be serviced, produced, or purchased in due time.
- neltnerb 14y agoDuring the event, the thing that kept coming to mind was... if the suspects actually have bombs set up, why on earth would you want to gather thousands of police officers around the scene? How many people does it take to monitor a boat to make sure no one leaves it? But when it comes to a lockdown during a manhunt? That struck me as completely reasonable given that they (a) knew roughly where the suspects were, (b) knew they had access to explosives, and (c) didn't want to risk hurting civilians. It's easy to play armchair police commissioner. See, I did it too right in the first paragraph. But I'm not the one calling the shots, and they did lift the lockdown when they thought they'd failed to catch him. I really have a hard time writing the response off as security theater when it seems like such a totally reasonable response for an efficiency perspective. And the odds of them planting future bombs was high to say the least, unlike some random stickup (which also happen not infrequently in Boston). This was a very different situation than an armed robbery.
- john_w_t_b 14y agoWhat message does this shutdown send to other potential rampage killers and sociopaths? You can shutdown society and have millions of people read your life story by committing one of these crimes. We should be treating these murderers more like internet trolls. Try to ignore their message and get them out of circulation as soon as possible.
- twistedpair 14y agoOf course you don't want to cower in fear and act terrorized. Yet, sending the message that any steps necessary to catch terrorists will be taken within reason is a powerful deterrent. You can't just fade into the shadows. The entire city will contribute to finding and neutralizing the threat.
- john_w_t_b 14y agoFor any crime, there's a risk-reward balance. On the risk side, many rampage killers are suicidal and don't seem to fear the consequences of law enforcement. We need to focus on taking away the reward for these crimes i.e. public attention.
- Evbn 14y agoYou assume without evidence that this act was a cry for attention, and not the more obvious attempt to hurt people.
- twistedpair 14y agoPrecisely. Hence it is rational for the public to carry out a manhunt to remove the threat.
- Evbn 14y agoIt tells them that if they pull a stunt like this in Boston, half a million people will cooperate to catch them and they won't escape. Good.
- pmorici 14y agoThere are some interesting bits here with respect to debating if telling everyone to close shop and stay home was an effective thing to do but I think the breathless martial law wasted government spending line of argument isn't really convincing in this particular instance
- thedaveoflife 14y ago>First, the unprecendented shutdown of a major American city may have increased safety some small bit, but it was not without a cost: keeping somewhere between 2 and 5 million people from work, shopping, and school destroyed a nearly unimaginable amount of value. If we call it just three million people, and we peg the cost at a mere $15 per person per hour, the destroyed value runs to a significant fraction of a billion dollars. The assumption being that the people who didn't spend that $15 will not just go out and spend it today?
- raldi 14y ago> The assumption being that the people who didn't spend that $15 will not just go out and spend it today? By that logic, every even-numbered day should be a national day of leisure.
- afterburner 14y agoIt occurs to me re: Dunkin Donuts, if you're going to keep a huge number of police in an area for an exhausting open-ended search, you'll want caffeine and sugar readily available in large quantities at many locations...
- csixty4 14y agoAnd warm coffee especially. It was a wee bit chilly yesterday evening.
- learc83 14y agoYes, locking down an entire city, is an effective method to conduct a manhunt. But just look at these pictures, http://imgur.com/a/Asgdb#0 http://imgur.com/a/Asgdb#0 Two untrained losers were able make a major American city look like a warzone. I hope there aren't other potential bombers out there thinking "that's all it takes..."
- kvb 14y agoWell, presumably the response differs depending on the expected frequency of such incidents. Given that this sort of incident is thankfully rare, I don't think it's an inappropriate response. If copycats are inspired by it, tactics will have to change.
- sek 14y agoYeah that's what I thought too, a lot of spreekillings are about attention. I also think they were waiting to show their big toys out on the street. Armored vehicles for a 19 year old without military training and equipment?
- Evbn 14y agoHi, Mr Troll. This kid shot a college security guard to death, so the armor came out so he wouldn't kill 20 more. I didn't see you volunteering to chase him down in your tshirt and shorts. Considering that you do your police work from tour computer , I would predict that he could outrun you anyway.
- danielweber 14y agoI like your point, and this is just my own personal nit to pick, but Collier was 100% a police officer, fully deputized like any other cop.
- kevincennis 14y agoI know I already commented, but one other thing bothers me about this article and I feel compelled to address it: "Yes, that's right – it wasn't until the stupid lock-down was ended that a citizen found the second murderer". Obviously this is pure speculation, but it certainly doesn't seem unreasonable to think that if it weren't for the "stupid lock-down", the suspect probably wouldn't have been forced to hide in a boat in the first place.
- billwilliams 14y agoHow many people who are calling the events from boston "martial law" and "security theater" are from Boston or more specifically Watertown? Until an armed man with explosives is hiding in your back yard, your opinion is not particularly useful.
- sehugg 14y agoI don't think the decision was necessarily wrong, but it shouldn't be taken lightly either. We may be able to learn from it. A man in Watertown, David Henneberry, found the suspect in his boat only after the curfew was lifted. The suspect himself was identified using footage voluntarily donated from citizen's cameras! This is what we should be celebrating -- the collaboration between citizenry and police. This is not the time for STFU. We may do even better next time.
- MrFoof 14y ago>If we call it just three million people Which would be ludicrously inflated. Belmont, Waltham, Newton, Cambridge, Watertown and the Allston/Brighton neighborhoods of Boston -- which was the original cities/neighborhoods suggested to stay at home -- is 375,000 people. When you add the rest of Boston in (8AM Friday), you're at about 900,000 - 950,000 people. 5 million would be nearly the entire state population. Moreover, I still went grocery shopping on Friday -- I live in one of the most northeastern parts of the city (Charlestown), which was about 5 miles away from the active dragnet. There were people about. Some businesses were open, as was the case in East Boston and many other neighborhoods. The real work closures were on account of orders by property management companies. Private security firms, from what I heard from several folks, are who refused entry into their buildings in the Financial District to any one, probably on account of limiting their potential liability. Even then, most folks I knew had received reverse-calls from their employer even before MBTA service was suspended (which wasn't until 5:30AM). >"Four victims brutally killed" goes by other names in other cities. In Detroit, for example, they call it "Tuesday". I'm not sure about fatalities, but Boston called it Tuesday as well. There were 6 shooting across Boston on the evening of Tuesday the 16th (which is a very abnormal amount for the city). Most are thought to be gang-related. No one thought anything of it. Even when I listened to the police scanner starting around 10:45PM on Thursday evening, I simply assumed that it was a rash of gang-related or usual criminal activity (especially being a convenience store robbery). However, gangs don't usually tote around the equivalent of giant fragmentation grenades. There are plenty of guns in Boston, but folks using explosives aren't like gun owners (legal possession or not) -- they're psychopaths. By the time Tamerlan was recovered, law enforcement was aware the guy was wearing an explosive vest and they had already used a fair number of IEDs that evening. I doubt it was a call that commissioner Davis and governor Patrick wanted to make, but there was probably a very legitimate concern that more mass casualty events were a possibility. It was clearly a very defensive action -- after all, after 7 hours they still had a suspect who had managed to evade hundreds of police. Another factor for the decision may have been that both attacks were on curiously popular dates for attacks: The bombings were on Patriots Day (on which Columbine, and Virginia Tech shootings also occurred), and the 19th is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombings and the Waco, Texas Standoff. Terrorists loves them some symbolism.
- 14y ago
- bane 14y agoIf there was ever a way to drag all the self-deluded over-protected entitled iron-balled Rambo types who claim Batman level crime, anti-terror and anti-IED fighting expertise out into the light to provide some of the most ignorant and frankly stupid commentary I've probably ever seen, typed safe from their keyboards, this event was it.
- largesse 14y agoThere should be some word for externalities caused by the difference between perceived and actual risk. The only word that comes to mind is: shitstorm.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoI'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I do think there are many concerning aspects to shutting down a city for law enforcement purposes, even if much of that happens more or less voluntarily. On the other hand this was a rather unusual situation where the suspects were at large, well armed, known to be in a specific area, and their names and faces were known. I can't think of many other equally comparable situations. What I do know for certain though is that there's far too much emotion in this discussion right now. This is an important topic that deserves thoughtful, relaxed discussion, but I don't think that's happening or even possible at the moment.
- conanbatt 14y agoAlthough one point or another in the post is disagreeable, there is something perverse is such a "shutdown" reaction. The reality is that all situations create precedent, which mean that a party with interest in shutting a city down only needs a single hand made bomb to create such distraction.
- Evbn 14y agoAnd when such a party is apprehended, there will be no more parties to start trouble.
- conanbatt 14y agoThose are never "apprehended" because they are not silly. In argentina, the "news" that Maradona was dead flew around several times, creating distraction in key days of political trials. A city-wide shutdown is an opportunity for a vast number of people, both legal and criminal in activity. And now , you can consider a home-made bomb that doesnt even kill someone knowing the reaction. A little paranoid maybe :)
- Anechoic 14y agoIn my life I've had police point their weapons at me, I've had a cop blatantly lie in testifying against me, and I've been threatened with arrest for having the audacity to wave 'hi' to a cop as he was driving by and for sitting in a car with white women (yeah, I'm black, how did you know?). I am certainly sympathetic to the view that police and police powers need to be approached with skepticism. That said, the critics that have popped up over the past 14 hours seem to twisted skepticism into a view that no law enforcement officer anywhere should ever be trusted under any circumstances and cooperating with the police for any reason is leading us down the slipper road to fascism. I look at the past 24-hours and see the best of civilization. Law enforcement and private citizens worked together which allowed an alleged murdered to be captured alive with no civilian casualties and limited property damage. The Boston area was back in business as of 8pm last night, and come Monday, folks will be back to work. I can't see this as anything other than a success. I'm curious - other than RMS, is there anyone within the affected area that felt the response and the search was inappropriate?
- Evbn 14y agoThis a viewpoint that needs more echo's. Every libertarian gun fan is just jealous that the cops got to use the big toys this week. In their fantasies, the bomber would have been in their boat, and they could have shot him themselves, and they would be the hero. And we would never get a proper investigation into how this all started.