Many people are raising some legit question, but some of the people raising the questions are scurrilous ne’er-do-wells, to whom I won’t link here. So I’m putting the questions here without, one hopes, drawing the trolls. My hope here, in case it’s not abundanly clear, is to be as tedious and self-righteous as I can be as a means of scaring away those who are both weak of stomach and of intellect.
Taking the estimable KBusch as a starting point, I’ll quote him raising the questions here and, hopefully, leave the scurrilous muckracking behind.
Certainly, I’m relieved and grateful this whole thing has been resolved (assuming there are no accomplices out on the loose). It’s also a given that this kind of police activity is thankfully rare and not something at which we expect our local police force to overwhelmingly excellent at. And yes, we owe a great deal of gratitude to the police and the FBI.
At the minimum, though, there seem to be some lessons to be learned here — and policing units striving toward excellence are probably already examining these questions and more expertly than we can here. Questions are: (1) How was it possible that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was able to escape the police as his brother was dying? It looks as if some kind of tactical error occurred. No?
(2) Why was Dzhokhar discovered outside the perimeter of the searched area? Was the search area set too narrowly? Was the wrong kind of search undertaken?
One might want to think carefully about these questions especially because the Tsarnaevs were not particularly well-trained at this kind of operation. There’s even a fair bit of evidence that, with Tamerlan’s boxing career going nowhere and him being a stay-at-home Dad and with Dzhokhar evidently failing out of college, this was more individual than ideological. Should we face more talented adversaries, the results could be much worse.
My answer to both these questions appears, to me at least, to be an abundance of caution on the part of the police. I think this is backed up by the citizens of Watertown who clearly co-operated willingly for the duration of the issue: The police, in my view, where not so much just hunting one man, but, in going house to house, clearing home made ordnance and implementing “shelter in place” had to proceed with diligence and discipline and, in my esteem, they succeeded admirably. Let us not forget that they were chasing men who had, in the words of Commissioner Davis, “viciously assassinated” an MIT police officer, heedlessly tossed bombs onto the street and fired many rounds already… and this was mostly before they had determined the men had perpetrated a cold blooded bombing of the marathon. So you’re a cop. You’ve already seen two of your comrades shot, one dead and the other seriously. You’ve been in a firefight. One of the suspects went down fighting. There’s ordinance all over the street. Some have already gone off. What do you do? You proceed with extreme caution.
I also don’t think that the 19 year old was hiding in the boat the entire time. There is some evidence that he had moved around a bit before finding the boat. As for the perimeter being set just shy of the boat? The perimeter had to be drawn somewhere. Nobody ever said that the evil person was immune to getting lucky. As much as I’d like the world to have given up the suspect after the car chase… I’d like even more for the bombing to have never happened.
I think without “shelter in place”, a specific legal term that is much different from the much bandied-about “lock down”, we would have seen at least one, if not several, instances of panicky innocent turning a sudden corner on tired and trigger happy cop, with disastrous consequences. It’s not like it’s never happened before, in other cities, in less tense circumstances.
My feeling is that this went down about as well as it could have gone down. That’s neither encomium nor criticism, but a clear-eyed view of tremendous effort under tremendous pressure. Would that we had caught them both before Sean Collier died. Would that we had prevented the bombing. There may have been better ways this could have ended up, but this life is often called a “vail of tears” and for good reason, and so we’re not guaranteed amiable outcomes. What I will praise is the tremendous effort and the clear willingness on the part of the police to get up and do it again tomorrow, should the need arise. Will they learn from this? I hope so. Do they deserve criticism and condemnation, including accusations of “incompetence”? Absolutely not. Police incompetence usually involves a far higher death toll.
they suck. They can just hi-jack a post and before you know it no one cares what you said.
I hate people that do that. Don’t you?
grammar is everything
1. FBI 2011.
How did they examine Russian intel. How will this event cause them to revisit other guys on the list?
2. Massive armored cars, etc.
EB3 has a preexisting condition that I share — allergy to these, skepticism about rationale, feels like boys buying toys. Seems like rare agreement among many libertarian/conservatives and ACLU types.
Of course you can always construct a theoretical case here, but seems bad use of resources, and just a little unnerving. Fear that law enforcement who covet this stuff will try to use event to justify additional purchases, even though in the end, it was a guy in his backyard and 3 cops.
2b. Moreover, EB3 was asking if the coordination of all the “big stuff” might have impeded investigation, displacing more shoe leather regular search.
3. Perimeter of shelter-in-place.
I live in Watertown. I was fine with it. A reasonable judgment call, at worst, and possibly a very good judgment call. Folks will revisit in coming weeks.
Just want to make sure we learn here for next time. No blame.
Did they need it in Hyde Park and East Boston? What is precedent for next violent criminal on the loose? Etc.
More specifically, on this particular occasion I had no problem with them shutting down Boston and cities near the incidence.
I had no problem with all the toys and manpower.
I have a huge problem that they didn’t check covered boats that close to the scene.
I would have thought that would have extended to areas of Newton, Belmont, Waltham, Cambridge, and Boston. Watertown borders these cities and easy jog or sprint for a 19 year old soccer player scared shitless.
I strongly believe that training, experience, and money spent on these guys is all for not if they forget to put gas in the cars, put their pants on in the morning, show up for work, breath, eat, sleep, OR
CHECK THE GODDAMN BOATS NEARBY!!!!
By raise of hands how many BMGers would never have thought to look under backyard covered boats? Right, i see those raising their hands aren’t wearing any pants.
We are lucky people weren’t killed in Watertown because the cops forgot to put their pants on.
I never realized we have to teach them how to put their pants on or check inside backyard covered boats for suspects fleeing on foot.
Was this a search and avoid mission. The guys so dangerous let someone else take the chance of coming across him>
KBusch is “inestimable,” not “estimable.”
Estimable: worthy of respect, deserving of esteem, etc.
Inestimablei: too great to measure, unable to calculate value
If that’s what you want to say, fine, but you’re the one who’s gonna have to go through all the M&Ms to pick out all the green ones or otherwise deal with the, eccentric, contractual obligations he’ll eventually want… =-)
It’s brown M&Ms, and Van Halen required it. You had to provide them with M&Ms back stage, brown ones removed. If there were any brown M&Ms, the band wasn’t going to do the show, but get paid nonetheless.
Eccentric? Nope. Really clever.
Van Halen’s tour had something like 9 18-wheelers with their gear. Really complex electronics, pyrotechnics, etc. This stuff was big, and was complicated, and if not installed correctly, the show would bkackout at best or be really dangerous to the band or the fans at worst. So, they put in the brown M&M clause. If there were brown M&Ms, it was obvious that the technical specifications of the contract weren’t in compliance.
It was a canary in a coal mine. Pure genius. Admit it — this is the picture of one clever dude.
inestimable, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
When I was in high school we used to say that green M & M’s made you horny. I don’t know how that would fit in.
Mayor Menino mentioned today that a pipe bomb was discovered elsewhere in Boston on Friday. There was a controlled detonation at Charlesgate Friday morning. I don’t know whether that was the pipe bomb or not. They couldn’t have known whether or not it was part of a larger plot at the time.
I’m reserving judgement on the whole shelter-in-place thing but I think almost everyone made their own judgements based on how far away they were. Places like Hyde Park, Dorchester probably were less concerned than Allston-Brighton and Cambridge. The authorities probably had no clue at that point what there were up against. They had a dead cop, one wounded one, and a shootout with several hundred rounds fired, and various IED’s thrown at cops in a residential neighborhood and then one of perpetrators running over his confederate, which could be interpreted as pretty cold and ruthless.
From a tactical standpoint the shelter-in-place limited Suspect #2’s options. He couldn’t carjack a car in the area (no one was driving). He couldn’t take public transportation (The T was closed.) He was limited to running on foot and he was apparently injured. The fact that he was just outside the perimeter was probably mostly dumb luck. When they lifted the order about 6PM (with about an hour or so of daylight left) they unleashed dozens of eyeballs to widen the search and then he was found. Would they have found him earlier, maybe, maybe not.
It probably could have been done with a slightly smaller show of force, but I suspect the people in the neighborhood felt a little better seeing it. I’m a little squeamish about it, but, hopefully, it was a unique event.
It’s all about the boat. Why do they get a pass on this.
Jesus fucking christ, this the blog where people were having conniptions two weeks ago because Bob DeLeo didn’t call Deval back.
I don’t understand you guys. I really don’t
A boat! WTF
thank you for describing my thoughts on this better than I would have.
1. Why did Putin call Pres Obama and oddly inform him that this is what Russia has to deal with?
2. Why did the Pro-Russian President of Chechnya infer that America’s “decadence” was the cause of the bomber’s murderous actions?
3. Who did the older brother consort with while he was in Russia?
4. Why did the Russian journalists who questioned their government’s broader role in Chechen violence as perhaps state fomented wind up murdered?
The events surrounding this awful act are complicated with too many, as Gore Vidal would say, “coincidences.” Not suggesting conspiracy but threads to investigate. Unfortunately all countries have a clandestine violent approach to strong disagreements.