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.

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.

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???

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.

"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.

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.

Lockdowns work when you have info about the suspect's location. You don't just lock down after any large crime. Especially considering bombs can be detonated via cell phone. But when the police had some intel on location, they locked a small area down, and then expanded when they feared the suspect had managed to get out of the area.

Why shutdown mass transit? So he could not easily flee. It is now known he was hiding within the lockdown area and then moved out of there to the boat. If the buses and trains had been running, there is no telling where he would have gotten or what he might have done.

Fair enough, I wasn't there - and I'm sure that had I been there I'd have been sitting quietly in my residence. But right or wrong, the message I picked up from Twitter / CNN / BBC / Spanish news was of a city shut down.

(Seriously, though, they taste like plastic.)

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.

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.

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....

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....

And BTW, DC was partially locked down for weeks, by civilians: my outdoor rec sports league cancelled itself out of fear of snipe threatsm

We in the RKBA community don't think that's coincidental.

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.

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.

I have never been to Boston (though will soon en route to a Patriots game), however I find it hard to believe it is normally that quiet.

I agree with you in general. Seemed like a good call, not a sign of a police state. These were extremely temporary and timely measures, and normality resumed quickly.

Police were in an active search for a man believed to be:

- suicidal, intent on taking as many people down with him as possible

- armed with automatic weapons and numerous explosives

It would seem reasonable that he could show up at a bus or a subway stop and cause dozens of casualties.

The process certainly could have lead to the capture, even if indirectly.

The only reason I can figure that these two bombers weren't in Mexico or someplace else far away by Thursday is that they weren't finished with their terrorism. I think a lot of us were thinking that.

On a related note, Gov Patrick impresses me with the way he handles emergencies. I don't always agree with his politics, but he's a helluva leader.

We were all on edge (I live on the North Shore); we knew that he may be able to get out of the city and seek to continue his rampage elsewhere. I think the authorities did an outstanding job all around, and perhaps got a little lucky. But the 'lockdown' seemed to help them get the job done in a deliberate, systematic way. Other cities will learn from this.

This is a seriously bad slippery slope, and I can see this escalating like SWAT teams have done in the last 20 years. How long until a "child abduction alert" turns into a city-wide lockdown and door-to-door search?

Wait for one of these to happen on an election day. That would be interesting.

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.

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.

Citations? Examples?

That sounds very different from "not allowed to open".

Police chief saying: "We're asking everyone to shelter in place, no vehicle traffic is going to be allowed to travel in or out of Watertown, until further notice, no businesses are going to be allowed to be opened."

There was coverage of a few incidents of bystanders in cars or taxis being swarmed by cops but I haven't been able to google up any specific reporting on those incidents at the moment. Without trawling through all the live coverage it might be hard to track down.

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.

Lifetime? Now that is an amplification.

Security theater in the U.S. has cost many thousands of lives in the past ten years, for nothing.

Exceptions can be made for exceptional circumstances. If, God forbid, terrorism on US soil becomes commonplace, then his point is no longer applicable (since his point is about rare things).

The news media is making it worse by taking "lockdown", a term that originated in prisons and then appropriated by schools and throwing it around in this context.

Schools, at least, have some sort of legal basis for restricting movement as they are loco in parentis for minors. There is no legal basis for doing this to adults in cities short of an actual declaration of martial law.

Evidently he wasn't bleeding enough when he exited the carjacked Mercedes for dogs to follow him, so they knew roughly where he was, but drew the cordon a little too small (he was really into soccer, probably a good runner).

So with enough surveillance, if he'd moved after daylight he might have been caught. Then again, the authorities denied themselves the use of thousands of eyeballs of Watertown subjects, who would have likely recognized him from the description (the point about blood above is that I'm assuming they assumed he wasn't bleeding heavily, a much stronger tell).

And it was one of those subject's eyeballs after they came back into play that resulted in the end of the hunt. Given what we know now, it was a mistake. Given what I'm assuming they knew then, it was not obviously one.

"it [sends a] message: if you set off bombs in a public space, we will shut down the city and hunt you like vermin until we find you."

Of course, that only works if they actually do find you, which they didn't, although they might be able to spin it that way.

Correlation does not imply causation. If you seriously follow these sorts of studies, you'd know not to trust anything coming from the VPC (well, maybe they've done a good one, but I'm not aware of any, and helped Clayton Cramer destroy their "Concealed Carry Killers" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095754).

And that's irrelevant to my point about the historical definition of a citizen in a republic. You aren't anymore, and whatever good you may think that does you, it still does not change that fact.

Again, I am unclear on your definition of our citizenship. Are you suggesting that this event altered it?

And I attacked the source because I've actually done serious research on their work (well, as one of several minions of Clayton's). It's hard to retain respect for an organization when you track down incidents of "Concealed Carry Killers" and find out many never even had a concealed carry license. Or the guy with the licence didn't hurt anyone (albeit he was an idiot). Or the license was irrelevant, a fumble plus a defective weapon resulted in a true accidental death. Etc.; did you take a glance at the paper I linked to, like I did at the VPC paper?

Not to mention I know their history of deliberate lying propaganda, Josh Sugerman is a twisted genius, e.g. he had the whole campaign against "assault weapons" planned out a year or two before Stockton. The VPC is by far the best "think tank" of the gun grabbers (compare to the Joyce Foundation squandering millions trying to establish a "collective right" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which 9 out 9 Supreme Court justices disagreed with).

To your latter question, no. The traditional historical definition of a citizen in a republic was one who bore arms in defense of it, at least when called upon to. To bring this to American particulars, if you're a citizen or have declared an intention of becoming one and are between 17 and 44 years of age inclusive, you are a member of the unorganized militia (10 USC § 311). But if your state denies you the right to keep and bear arms, or makes that hard, expensive and legally dangerous, so very few do, including I gather you ... I call you a subject, not a citizen.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

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".

People who weren't able to go to work and aren't salary most likely won't be paid. Or, employers will have to pay to employees who performed no work. The money has to come from somewhere, right? Unless of course the government wants to spread the cost over all the citizens and cover all expenses. And everything that comes as a result of the lockdown or whatever you want to call it.

Ficticiously I can tell you that if I had servers located in that area and something happened where they couldn't be fixed remotely and were down (for an unrelated reason) I'd be pretty upset if the tech people or remote hands weren't at their job. Or the new motherboard couldn't be installed because the repairman wouldn't go to the colo. Why? Because my customers that are all over the world aren't going to give me a pass on this nor do I want to make excuses as to why things aren't working. Further, this was not an "act of god" in the sense of a disaster that there was no control over (a person made the decision to "suggest" nobody go outside and that will have consequences).

It's easy for people who have only minor things as a result of a lockdown (cancelled classes or you work for a big corporation or you are unemployed) but not everybody falls into the same category. We all aren't government employees who get paid regardless, right?

The point is simply that a cost benefit calculation needs to be done. (Like they do when they try to justify hosting the Olympics or Superbowl). The comparison (if correct I haven't checked) to Detroit is valid somewhat. Obviously in any case we can assume that if there was 1 or 2 of these bombings per month any city wouldn't be shutting down they would realize that it simply can't be handled that way.

Fwiw - I'm not in the Boston area and had no consequences as a result of the decision.

But many people do (live hand to mouth) and sometimes for circumstances that are beyond their control and sometimes of course simply because they make the wrong choices. My point is simply while it is great that you in particular had no issue losing pay (or I might have possibly feel the same way) not everyone would - I'm sure you will agree with that.

Not to mention that the crowd effect many people would simply make decisions based on what others are doing or social pressure.

If I were the guy who was supposed to be working on your servers, I suspect I'd be much more concerned about the apprehension of a suspected terrorist (or murderer, if you prefer that term) than I would be with a customer's disapproval of a lock-down decision I had no control over. I don't see myself losing much sleep over the fact that you were "pretty upset".

I suggest then that you try building up from scratch a business using your own money, time and effort over the course of many many years where you have large customers that can and easily drop you and see if you feel the same way.

Have you ever owned a business where you have major customers that expect everything will just work and the buck stops with you?

Many things in the world work this way no excuses matter. Same as if you are taking a LSAT or MCAT test which will determine if you are going to get admitted to a good school or an OK school and something happens where you don't do well on the test it doesn't matter why. You suffer the consequences.

Chances are the "tech people or remote hands" were on the job. Again, this wasn't martial law, folks that had reason to be out and about were out and about. If a colo felt it was important for staff to be on hand, there were likely staff on hand.

Maybe a particular student had an interview planned with admissions at a college and had no way to reschedule (parent took them, had to be back). And they would have made a good enough impression to get admitted to the school?

Maybe someone had a wedding planned (could have been a weekend just as easily, right?) that evening or a charity event and had paid deposits and had guests in transit and people didn't show up at the caterer. Who covers all these loses from a suggestion like this?

Forget whether these examples (as with the colo one) which are arbitrary mean anything to you in particular or matter at all to you.

I don't care at all about sports but I can understand a child being disappointed when he is supposed to go to a game with his father on a particular evening. (My point is not the merits of the downside I am presenting but rather whether it makes a difference to me vs. the child who misses the game).

"If a colo felt it was important for staff to be on hand, there were likely staff on hand."

I don't think you can assume that the employees at the colo would agree to show up just like that, that they wouldn't have pressure to not go (from spouses) or that they wouldn't have to cover for a spouse that worked at another job (say medicine or law enforcement).

The point is much resources were dedicated to catching this one individual (even the deployment of so many "assets" without respect to the impact it had on anyone at all.

Is the same concentrated deployment of assets being done in cities such as Camden, Newark, Detroit with high murder rates and daily crime?)

Shit happens. In this case it was a manhunt, but it could easily have been a highway accident, gas main break, flood or snowstorm that caused a student to miss an interview. I don't see your point.

I don't care at all about sports but I can understand a child being disappointed when he is supposed to go to a game with his father on a particular evening.

This has happened to my biz partner who promised to take his son to BoSox games and then had to cancel because of work. Kids gets over it.

I don't think you can assume that the employees at the colo would agree to show up just like that, that they wouldn't have pressure to not go (from spouses)

The same pressure could have been applied if the bomber wasn't caught, although over multiple days instead of just one.

Is the same concentrated deployment of assets being done in cities such as Camden, Newark, Detroit with high murder rates and daily crime?

As I mentioned in another post in this thread, yes you do see deployment of resources and police asking citizens to stay indoors when chasing armed suspects/gang suspects who have killed innocents. The search areas tend to be smaller and the deployment not as extreme, but then again the threats tend to be proportionally smaller (1-2 guys with handguns vs 1-2 guys with automatic weapons and explosives). I live in a high-crime city and have seen it happen first hand.

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...) was lifted that a Massachusettes subject exited his house, noticed something was amiss and called the police.

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.

Scenario 1) No lockdown. Homeowner goes to work, goes out to dinner with colleagues after work, goes to a movie/bar/club and doesn't return home until 1am. Notices boat has been disturbed, checks and doesn't find anything because the suspect fled hours earlier.

Oh, you don't have to look very far to see potential "complications", e.g. http://12160.info/forum/topics/two-women-shot-in-manhunt-for...

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.

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) should notice the immediately availble police resources....

Always good to look at the bottom lines.

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.

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. ?

There's a huge difference with the other examples. Namely in how indiscriminate it all is.

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.

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.

These look like soldiers. I think theres another one with Humvees.

(Note: I do not disagree with the Guard's involvement; just correcting the misstatement that military were not involved.)

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.

"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."

To date, I have not read of any involuntary searches of property not _specifically_ tied to the suspects actions. Neighborhood canvassing (knocking on doors and talking to residents) is not considered a search.

The public seem to have been very cooperative, working _with_ law enforcement to locate the suspect.

Edit: Readability of "reread"

Posse Comitatus Act:

"The Bill/Act as modified in 1981 refers to the Armed Forces of the United States. It does not apply to the National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. "

* The National Guard of Massachusetts has blackhawks. They are used in times of emergency. This was one such case.

* Governor was there. Invited them. Same state. Law enforcement capacity.

4th Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Warrants are required for evidence to be used in a court of law. This was not an evidenciary expedition.

* People were not seized from their homes

* People's effects were not seized from their homes

* Searches were in cooperation with home owners (remember, everyone staid home Friday)

* There was probable cause as the suspect was in the area as proven when they found him a few hundred feet from the search area

* There was a clear risk to public safety (7 bombs set off, hundreds of rounds fired, a cop dead, another near death, 15 police hopitalized)

No, I'm not familiar with case law at all. I just took American History in high school and know how to search Wikipedia.

You realize that the MA National Guard has blackhawks, right?

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.

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.

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.

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.

But just look at these pictures, 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..."

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?

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.

"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.

Until an armed man with explosives is hiding in your back yard, your opinion is not particularly useful.

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.

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.

The governor makes it sound like "all of Boston, all of Boston" ...

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.

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 :)

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?

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.