I must respectfully disagree. In a neighbourhood where it is believed a known cop-killer is hiding, *everyone *is a potential threat, whose intentions must be determined. The police could not afford to ignore that person and simply presume that because he was looking out the window of a house he was not the suspect.
(If the cops had swarmed out of their vehicle, barged into the house and wrestled the watcher to the floor to assess his threat level, you would have a point. But covering an unknown person for a few moments during a sweep of an area is a reasonable and appropriate response.)
I respectfully disagree. If we were talking about an area of two or three houses, I could understand it being reasonable to fear a person looking out the window. But an entire city? Because one guy is on the loose?
Where does the area stop? To be silly, could any resident on the East Coast lawfully have a gun pointed at them for looking out a window?
If only the police had a way to narrow down which one or two houses in the area the suspect might be hiding in! But, they are not psychic, although they were able to apprehend him within hours of the lockdown.
(Whether they were very effective is a different discussion, as I understand he was found just outside of the area they had conducted house-to-house searches.)
It’s wasn’t an entire city. This took place in close proximity to the gun fight and bomb exchange where one brother was killed and the other escaped. There was no house-to-house searching in other areas of Boston or the surrounding towns (except a few isolated instances responding to reports and/or in the suspects home).
It was a real large part of a city (and maybe a city by some definitions). My point still stands. How large of an area should a resident of a home be subject to having a gun pointed at him because a fugitive is on the loose? There was no specific evidence that the guy was in any one of those homes.
Can we say that if a suspect has been determined to be in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, or possibly got on a plane to California, that residents of all of those states can be assaulted for looking out of their home windows?
Even here in Communist China, the cops have a bunch of rules they have to follow to ensure their own safety and the safety of the public. And not all of the cops are armed, either.
Would it be preferable that Mr. Tsarnaev had escaped and continued plotting further acts of terror, if it meant someone didn’t briefly have a gun pointed at him for disobeying police orders during a state of emergency?
Why does such a thing logically follow? Are you suggesting that they could not have captured the suspect without pointing guns at law abiding homeowners?
And, again, we don’t live in a police state. I don’t have to follow “orders” from the government which involves conduct in my own home such as looking out of a window.
Really? Then they can pay for the damned ambulance they have to call to extract me and haul my gimpy arse somewhere as this is not a good body week and I am stuck in bed pretty much unable to move on my own [between the damned arthritis, pseudogout flare and a strained muscle in my back preventing me from transferring to the chair on my own I am not a happy camper. I would probably tell them to go ahead and shoot me, my husband can use the lawsuit money.]
I think it worked brilliantly. They’ve taught whoever gets this idea in their head next that there is no glory in it and no act two. They’ll be hunted down, and that’s that.
I’ve had cops/military point guns at me. It’s not actually particularly scary or traumatic. For the kids, you tell them “There is a bad man out there, but the police are looking for him. It’s a little scary right now, but it will be okay.” Humans are tough creatures. A generation ago, British kids were trooping down to bomb shelters every night. They’ll get over it.