My position is the same as the one I have when the Imams were taken out of a US Airways plane. Tough luck Imams, vigilance means false positives will appear. After investigators spend time with them they realized it was indeed a false positive and they were released. BUT then the airline refused to take them back after the authorities found their explanations were valid. Not so fast US Airways, it is time then to say that the Airline was idiotic for not reacting to new info.
Likewise I see no problem that some dolts confused this device with a bomb and I can say now that Boston mostly acted properly. HOWEVER, their zeal looking for heads to roll is the idiotic part now, AFAIK the only thing they can get these guys will be for littering or graffiti, it was not their intention to make a bomb hoax, so I don’t believe they will pay a single red cent for pumped up charges. More likely I expect a good faith action by the network (with no declaration of fault regarding the hoax bomb charges) to the city of Boston will come.
Let me try one more time. I think I haven’t been completely clear.
I have no problems with Boston’s authorities handling this as a bomb threat to start. Provided they were following their procedures, I have no problems with how things were handled right up to the point that we started hearing about arrests of people “planting devices” and “bomb hoaxes”. Your procedures are written to keep people safe when they might not be thinking clearly. You can’t fault people for following them. I find fault with what happened afterwards and possibly how long it took to realize that whatever these things were, they weren’t bombs.
That said, let me be crystal clear on something else. I think just about everyone I worked with would have seen this and thought “no bomb”. Possibly a majority would have taken extra steps just to be on the safe side, because we all want to go home that night and don’t want to take extra risk. That doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have been 99% sure that there was no danger after about 30 seconds.
A bridge, subway or tunnel has never ever ever been attacked by a terrorist bomb in this country, ever. The likelyhood of it being a bomb is miniscule to the point of paranioa.
If it were a real bomb it would be unlikely for it to be in plain sight and so conspicuous.
Even a small bomb is a serious matter at a bus terminal where people congregate. Ordinary caution says you close the area, if only to make sure there’s nothing else around. And unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a significant transportation hub, you get ripple effects felt throughout the system – which is exactly what happened, and which is why, as I’ll say for the umpteenth time, people are pissed.
So are you retarded, or are you just fucking with me?
Should they have investigated? Yes.
Should they have, upon investigation, concluded that the devices were not bombs? Yes.
Does that fact that wires and batteries do not, in and of themselves, with no explosive present, constitute a bomb, affect such a conclusion? Yes.
Should they, upon concluding that the devices were not bombs, and were obviously not intended to look like bombs, have continued to blather on to the media about a supposed bomb hoax, and started arresting people? No.
If you think anyone has conceded any point to you, you are obviously stupid.
If you’re okay with the police and their procedures, I don’t see how you can fault what happened afterwards. If the proper procedures caused a subway line to be shut down, disrupting the entire system, then the city has a right to feel it’s been harmed, and has a vested interest in discouraging the kind of behavior that caused the problem in the first place.
Yikes. Sorry about that. I actually gave some thought to that, but I was sure I had seen you refered to as female before. I was probably just remembering someone elses mistake. My bad. I shall try to remember this in the future.
So if I call and report a sneaker near a bridge, do they have to treat it with the same slavish, err-on-the-side-of-caution procedure? Is there no room for common sense?
Some people is Seattle and other cities saw the exact same thing and figured out with little fanfare that they were not bombs.
Things with wires and batteries are not necessarily bombs and one should not go around assuming they are.
The device was decorated with a character that as soon as you could see it close up (like the cops or bomb guys could) it was obvious that it was not a bomb.
People did notice the device before hand and did not think it was a bomb…the people who freaked out and thought it was a bomb have over-reacted.
It was a LED display of a cartoon character that was not large enough to do the damage that the PTBs are now saying it could–even if it had been a bomb it would not have blown up a bridge.
It could have been lots of things and reasonable people check it out and do not close down huge portions of a city to deal with what amounts to trash stuck to the wall.
Well of course the city has a right, duh! But the reason now is idiotic, we also have a right to tell the city their charges of hoax bombs will not fly and they are now on the even more idiotic path to waste more city money now in legal fees when the best option was indeed to say “here is a ticket and bill for littering, don’t do this again”
Here’s a video of Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, the two guys arrested for putting up the lite-brites, responding to press questions with the level of respect and seriousness that this situation deserves.