We are talking about one man, presumably wounded.
I am far more concerned, verging on freaked out, by uniformed and heavily-armed police using “public safety” as an excuse to impose immediate martial law. I’m as concerned about the deaths and casualties as anyone. As tragic as these are, today’s lockdown is way beyond reasonable.
If our three centuries of freedom are ever lost, this is how it will play out.
Here are the two specific quotes that concern me:
and to be specific, we are speaking to the residents of Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge, and the Allston/Brighton neighborhoods of Boston. To those people, we are asking you to stay indoors, to stay in your homes, for the time being. We are asking businesses in those areas to please cooperate and not open today until we can provide further guidance and information.
…
“No vehicle traffic is going to be allowed into or out of Watertown until further notice”.
NECN link here (no embed available).
I’m sorry, but our constitutional and human rights of free assembly, pursuit of happiness, and freedom from unreasonable search are far too important to be so brazenly removed. The media hysteria is making this situation worse, not better.
I think it’s time for the police to take down the tapes, go about the search for the remaining suspect, and start saying “Nothing to see here, move along please”.
MCNBC is reporting that an IED has been found near S Station and police have stopped and surrounded an Amtrack train in Connecticut and are searching for a third suspect. I share your concerns but I think right now this truly is in the spirit of public safety.
I get that authorities may be concerned about there being a larger organization involved. Then they should say so.
I do not wish to live in a society where authorities take extreme steps to curtail fundamental rights and liberties first and explain themselves later.
In my view, we have crossed well over the line of reasonable concern for public safety, and way too far into plain old martial law.
Under the circumstances this is simply prudent, not an overreaction.
If it goes on we’ll beyond the conclusion of these events — whenever that happens — then you may have a point.
I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of either incident. I don’t doubt that such rumors may have flown by on a twitter feed this morning, but do you by any chance have any confirmation that either episode actually took place?
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The NYT reports that the AMTRAK train was stopped and searched because of a concern that the remaining suspect was aboard. He apparently was not.
I haven’t seen any followup regarding an IED near South Station. I did see a story this morning about a pipe-bomb being detonated at Commonwealth And Charles Gate near Kenmore Square.
through South Station twice a day so not going in town today is a minor inconvenience.
It seems to me that you are the one that is showing signs of anti-government paranoia and hysteria. The authorities recommendations makes absolute sense given what we know.
What we are seeing on the TeeVee is the absolute show of force by the state; we do not see the complex investigatory apparatus – and this thing is complex. Yet law enforcement appears to have their arms around it. Why is it that we can regulate the activities of the general populace in the name of public safety or the “general welfare” but cannot seem to regulate the complex and massive forces that are the engines of our economy? Obviously, one is to protect life and limb, but economic collapse can be equally as violent – without the bloodshed (which is why I think Christopher is a little too quick to protect the memory of Maggie Thatcher).
The other point is that it seems to me our rights by the constitution need constant defending. It takes more than one or two objections to the abrogation of our civil liberties to set things right. It requires resistance, outcries, etc by the people – sometimes lots of ’em – to preserve these rights (and I guess that applies to 2nd amendment zealots as well).
I’m all frazzled. I graduated in 2006 on the same stage as the dead suspect, friends knew his brother quite well, and my mom’s friends in Watertown have been reporting explosions and gunfire all day. I think Gov. Patrick, Commissioner Davis, and all the brave men and women in law enforcement have shown tremendous courage and also restrain in many regards. But we gotta get these guys before they hurt anyone else. This is not a false threat like Iraq or an orange alert, real people were killed in our streets on Monday, last night, and could be today. I sincerely respect where you are coming from Tom, believe me we all want a return to normal.
In 2002, two snipers killed ten people Maryland and Virginia — several of them blocks from the home where I grew up. The city was not locked down, the Metro was not closed, the region was not occupied by heavily armed and uniformed military personal.
In 2001, AQ murdered more than 2,000 people by destroying the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and simultaneously attacking the Pentagon. Subway service continued in upper Manhattan and in Washington. No lockdown took place. No invading armies.
It seems to me that the government is intentionally sending a message in its handling of this attack. I’d like to know what that message is and to whom it is directed. Whether intentional or not, the message I’m receiving is that the freedoms and rights of the entire Boston metropolitan area are trumped by the government’s desire for control.
The continued operation of the Red Line in its current state of disrepair and dysfunctional organization is, in my view, more hazardous to any individual Bostonian than the actual threat presented by the marathon bombers (unless they are part of an organization on par with AQ). Yet local authorities continue operating the Red Line while we shrug our shoulders and hope for the best — but immediately shut down the system and the city in response to an attack no worse than similar attacks in our recent history or the world’s.
If we do not make major changes in our response to this over-reaction, then the terrorists have already won.
You want to walk outside – go ahead.
And do you realize how foolish you appear when you state that the the Red Line is more dangerous than a mad man on the loose with guns and explosive devices?
Police forcing men, women, children out of their homes while guns are trained on them is the picture that’s developing. Makes one wonder who is considered the enemy.
Let’s face it, the bombers were able to get past a sea of law enforcement to deliver their bombs and last night one managed to evade police after a shoot-out. Not a thing to invoke pride.
Now the bloated-budget security forces parade down the street with their military style vehicles and costumes to show force to the citizens. The Israelis seem embarrassed for us.
Are we to see this on the streets for every crime?
for us? Oy vey. I’ll take our response to the marathon bombing over Israel’s response to terrorism any day. As I said above, part of the damage of terrorism comes in the reactions it causes. Terrorism has helped deform Israel into a wretched, cynical parody of what set out to be. There’s more to it than terrorism–Russian immigration and the ultra orthodox also have a lot atone for–but it is probably the biggest political currency in Israel today.
Why would this be the case? You seem to begging the question. After a heinous, unexpected act of terrorism followed by a shoot out with the suspects, the governor decided to ask people to stay in their homes for a day because one suspect who had been throwing bombs at police was still at large. What suggests that this is a slippery slope?
Indeed. And at 1:30 in the morning with ordnance littering the street and one officer already dead, another injured, I bet the cops wondered real hard.
Let’s remember who dragged the cops out there… shall we? If you want to blame someone, blame the terrorists. However much the cops may have over reacted you’re surely not going to argue that it was a, more or less, ordinary Friday morning in Watertown…
Israel has something of a fetish regarding the response to terrorists: it sometimes involves helicopter gunships firing into civilian populated buildings. So you can tell the Israelis who are embarrassed, from me, that they can go piss up a rope for all I care.
Mikes’ Bloomberg app was kind enough to tell me that the Boston Police haver re-instituted the stay-inside order and are converging on a house in Watertown.
An Arkansas legislator believes Bostonians all wish they had assault rifles.
Doesn’t that figure
the crossfire between a presumed armed and dangerous terrorist (for lack of a better word) and an army of law enforcement who might get in a shoot out with him, it’s good because it shows that the state doesn’t have the power that we already know it has? Isn’t that tea party logic?
We know the state has power and that it is misapplied in everything from incarceration to torture . But it’s okay for everyone to lock down and wait for law enforcement to catch this guy who has upset our commonweal as well as much of the country.
So did we handle the snipers and WTC bombings wrongly?
He’s one terrorist. He’s wounded. If the entire city has to be locked down and entire regions occupied by heavily-armed military to “protect” us, then I think something is wrong with the way we think about protection. Surely the fact that one individual has apparently amassed enough firepower to require this massive show of force demonstrates how desperately we need to get a handle on guns. We are living through the aftermath of the infamous “second amendment solution”. You know, the most effective way for a field-service representative to assure 100% availability of an information system is to disallow all users. Shutting down the city in the name of “security” strikes me as effectively doing the same.
I simply disagree that it’s okay for everyone to lock down.
Oh, and for hr-kevin, I’ve just been outside in my Somerville yard preparing the garden for growing season. This will astonish you, but the only abnormal thing I experienced was the sight and sound of helicopters hovering over the city.
I think this situation is already scary, and the way it is being handled makes it more so. I remember when armed soldiers first started appearing at the Esplanade for the fireworks. They make me feel less, rather than more, secure.
To me, this affair demonstrates that we spiraling into an self-destructive cycle of violence, fear, guns, and repression. I think we need to get the guns off the street, reaffirm the importance of a well-regulated militia, and strive to reassert the importance of ALL our American values and constitutional protections.
It’s entirely possible that he is a panicked and wounded terrorist whose body is wired to explode. Initial reports, that I’ve heard, indicate that such was true of the dead one. Other reports indicate that the suspects were lobbing IED’s out of the car in which they were attempting to escape. It’s, therefore, possible that the streets are littered with unexploded bombs.
I think the snipers were not armed with IED’s and the WTC bombers weren’t likely to get their hands on another 747.
Without authority of any kind on this subject, I’ll simply note the timeline: on the day clear photos were released the suspects emerged and, apparently, started firing and lobbing IEDs. We don’t know the sequence of events that led to the death of the MIT cop, but it’s possible that the suspects simply panicked and thus are even more unpredictable and thus even more dangerous.
On the subject of ‘hysteria’… I don’t see it. The police are simply forcing people to do what they otherwise would do: stay home for their own safety and for the ongoing sweep of the region. Is it a little much? Perhaps. But I don’t view it as either hysteria or totalitarianism.
I would prefer if ALL of the buzz was taken off the amplifiers and put back into acoustic mode.
Yes, of course I want the police to warn neighbors and evacuate areas with unexploded IEDs. Yes, I want to know what areas the police consider dangerous — then trust me to make rational decisions about my own safety and that of my loved ones.
I find the media frenzy about all this verging on the obscene. It’s a terrible, tragic situation. NECN spent a good part of the morning with a page-by-page traversal of the social media pages of the perpetrators. That is the kind of voyeuristic rubbish that I’ve had enough of.
While on a phone call this morning, I watched long minutes of some interminable briefing with no audio. The visual was striking: a diminutive Governor Patrick looking up in supplication at a much taller much larger uniformed police officer speaking to the public.
That image symbolizes the dynamic that greatly concerns me.
If any good comes of this, it’s to show how utterly, utterly dismal our media is. Such fail at almost every level.
You are the one being hysterical here. Sounds like this hasn’t actually inconvenienced you. So what’s your problem?
Note that it isn’t actually a “lock-down”. Except for a few small neighborhoods, everyone is free to move about if you want to ignore the recommendations of the authorities.
You can deny it all you want, but you really are coming off as paranoid.
I see. So if it doesn’t happen to me personally, it doesn’t count. I wasn’t “actually inconvenienced” by 9/11 — does that mean I shouldn’t care about it? I wasn’t “actually inconvenienced” by the bullshit Iraq invasion of 2003. Does that mean I shouldn’t care?
If the government is handling this the way you like it, good on you. This happens to be a political blog, and the events of this week are themselves political and will have political consequences for the foreseeable future.
I happen to think that a government that takes these draconian steps in this situation is a government that’s out of control. You disagree.
In the meantime, take your insults somewhere else, please.
I didn’t mean to insult you, only to point out that you are genuinely coming off as being unhinged. That is my perception. If you don’t mind being seen as unhinged, then go knock yourself out.
I really think that charging the government with being “out of control” is a pretty extreme charge when there is a madman with explosives and/or guns wandering around. I have to say that not a single person I have spoken with today even remotely agrees with you. Everyone thinks it is a crazy situation, but I have heard no one other than you criticize the government’s response. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but you are just as absolutely not entitled to have your opinion not contradicted.
I think any number of participants here will agree that my opinion is often contradicted. I generally do not counter with word choices like “hysterical” and “paranoid”.
I appreciate that you sincerely feel that I’m “coming off as being unhinged”. I, obviously, disagree.
The madman is not, from the many feeds, “wandering around”. For that matter, madmen with explosives have been wandering around for decades if not centuries. How do you think the bad-guys stopped trains to rob them in the 19th centry? As a nation, we somehow survived those madmen and we didn’t shut down and occupy entire cities to do so.
I agree that this is a volatile situation with a dangerous individual. No more and no less than that.
We are NOT at war.
First, when you say the government is way out of control, that opinion if not justified by the facts – I don’t think it is – is almost inherently paranoid.
And why don’t you read the title of your post again. For some reason you think it is perfectly ok to accuse others of “out-of-control hysteria” but think it out of bounds when applied to you.
I don’t know why you bring up 19th centry western outlaws as a counter example. Why should a train robbery miles away from anywhere shut down a city? And why do you think the 19th wild west a good example of civil society? Surely you aren’t trying to argue we all would be better off arming and protecting ourselves then letting the police do it for us? Or are you?
Ok, I grant you I used the term “hysterical” in the title and shouldn’t have been so sensitive when you did the same. Like I said, I join those who are cranky today. I think “paranoid”, nevertheless, crosses the line, as does “unhinged”.
I grew up in Washington DC. People have been blowing up things in DC pretty much as long as the city has been there. Puerto Rican nationalists shot 30 rounds at congress in the US Capital in 1954. The city wasn’t shut down.
It wasn’t just 19th century western outlaws who have blown up trains. I bring them up to emphasize that bad guys have been blowing things up for a long long time.
I’m certainly not suggesting that we arm ourselves or disarm the police.
I’m suggesting that reasonable force is called for, and it appears to me that what we have seen is way way over that boundary.
If our fundamental rights are so readily and so easily removed — with such approbation as you seem to present here — then what are they really worth? Isn’t it precisely when people are realistically fearful from a clear and present threat that our freedoms are most important?
I reject your suggestion that I’m paranoid or “coming unhinged”. I think we are frogs in a pot that is getting warmer and warmer and I think it’s time we turn off the heat.
but you really need to think a little bit more about how you present your arguments. Way to often you resort to hyperbolic rhetoric and take extreme umbrage at people who disagree with you. I suppose that’s fine if all you are trying to do is let off stream, but it is a poor way to sell your ideas.
You are right that bad guys have been killing people for a long time, and indeed we hear of random murders from regular criminals all too often, and it is also true that people die every day from all sorts of other hazards. From an actuarial perspective, it might not make sense to make such extreme efforts to catch these guys. But I think that public officials know perfectly well that they will be nailed to the wall if more deaths were to result when they were not doing everything they can to prevent it. So while you can call this an overreaction, it seems to me that the cause is more likely tied to the desire to live up to public accountability rather than an expression of dictatorial power.
my comment. I’m cranky. I think we’re all on edge.
It is scary. It may also be the future for a long time to come. Terrorism is an action that causes a reaction. You’re concerned, I think, about the reaction, which can be a negative response by our government. The last time this happened we got the Patriot Act. I think you have a point.
It’s certainly true that we’re all cranky. I appreciate your apology, and none was needed.
I think the root of my concern is that I fear we are experiencing another aspect of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent “war on terror”. The Patriot Act was bad, egregiously so, but was not necessarily in our faces. I don’t think this kind of heavy-handed response would have been tolerated prior to 9/11. I am very worried about not just the government’s response, but perhaps even more so the apparently eager welcome this response gets from the media and even here on BMG (witness the accusation that I’m “hysterical” and “paranoid”).
We have reporters covering neighborhoods within an easy walk of my house (Cambridge and Webster Streets) as if it’s a war zone. I get that areas in Watertown and Cambridge are dangerous because of the IEDs (seven at last count). So I’d like someone to please explain why South Station is STILL closed altogether. What does that accomplish? Why has AMTRAK canceled service for the day?
Other than a clear show of overwhelming force, what do all these militaristic measures accomplish?
the “militaristic measures” accomplished, if anything, and why they were implemented. My guess is that the reasons were, in no particular order: 1) law enforcement thought that it was the best chance of taking the kid alive 2) they were concerned with public safety.
They also want reassure people that they were on the job. That’s the reason for the state police presence in Watertown. When Newtown occurred, for example, my police force stepped up patrols on our schools. Part of this is to prevent copycats, but also to reassure people.
6:08 PM – The Governor has announced the lifting of the lock down effective immediately.
I heard Governor Patrick use the term “shelter-in-place.”
Shelter-in-place is a term we should all get familiar and comfortable with as it has been a frequent need in the past two years in the region. Shelter-in-place is not the same as “lock-down,” which has scrolled across the MSM tv screen. Shelter-in-place is not martial law. I follow the messaging of public officials carefully in emergency and disaster events and have found as I stated in a recent post, that the Governor and President have been exceptionally accurate, calming and straight with citizens in both this terrorist attack and other emergency/disaster events. The spokesperson for BPD did not speculate and stated that they did not know and/or where not able to comment.
MSM is another story for a dumpster dive.
I was under the impression there was freedom of movement allowed, obviously no T service and they were stopping cars on the road. But I saw Facebook comments of friends going to the convenience stores, and another would be photo journalist took a whole series of ‘ghost town’ shots. A few even had to go to work. I know my parents and brother stayed indoors though.
I’m really glad the situation ended well, and grateful for the tireless effort, but the response does need to be scrutinized.
My understanding is that turning the public loose led to a Watertown resident spotting the suspect and calling 911. One has to wonder whether he would have been apprehended sooner if the public were out and about and being vigilant.