4 ms·

I think you are conflating two points. The story of the week was about citizen help. Citizen help in supplying media, helping to identify suspects, supplying

I think you are conflating two points. The story of the week was about citizen help. Citizen help in supplying media, helping to identify suspects, supplying additional photos, reporting news, finding/reporting the final location of the second suspect. I agree with that. But to then to say that therefore, everything would have gone better had the police told no one to stay indoors, that's quite a leap of logic. It's also worth noting that it was the fbi or police force's decision to lift the recommendation. It's just as easy to argue that that was wise on their part, as it was to ask for photographic help, etc. All in all this seems like a strained effort to make the police forces appear incompetent or unnecessary.

hga 14y ago
I'm not making the claim that "everything would have gone better"; this subthread adresses the tradeoffs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5581940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5581940 I, at least, am not saying they're incompetent, but there's no denying they made a mistake (size of the cordon), in 20/20 hindsight 2 mistakes (keeping all the eyeballs outside the cordon inside). ADDED: They made a mistake, but no innocents were seriously injured to our knowledge and the suspect was captured alive. Massachusettes subjects are not quite as disarmed as I gather Indian civilians are, but any terrorists thinking about attempting 2008 Mumbai style attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks) should notice the immediately availble police resources.... Always good to look at the bottom lines.