I read an article today that conflicted with my recollection of the events resulting in his capture. I thought he was injured in the shootout with his brother, hid in the boat, and was captured at gunpoint. The article I read said the boat was riddled with 100+ bullets.
Was he armed in the boat? How in the hell can someone in a small boat survive concentrated gunfire from that many (presumably S.W.A.T. or other tactical force) officers and rounds? I remember the pic of him holding up his shirt to show no gun in his waistband with a red laser dot on his forehead. It just seems weird to me that they knew he was in there, got real close, opened fire, and he lived. They knew he had fired on police before and were understandably quick to open fire, but if he was unarmed wouldn’t that have been a bigger issue in the news?
FTR I have no sympathy for the guy, and am not judging police actions at all, it just seems weird to me.
Well, the boat’s much bigger than the boy. Most of the bullets passed through the boat without hitting the boy, who wasn’t visible to the shooters. Some of them hit him, but none fatally.
That makes it sound like they just shot at a boat for a while. They got a tip about someone in the boat, showed up and just opened fire? Makes no sense.
No, they knew he was in there - the boat owner had seen him - and (I think) called on him to surrender. When the tarp covering the boat was seen to twitch they knew him to be moving, and either they had some reason to think that his movement were hostile or they weren’t just taking any chances, because it was at that point that a large volume of fire was directed at the boat in the general vicinity of where he was thought to be, until the order was given to cease fire. (He was in fact unarmed, but the team surrounding the boat did not know this.) He was wounded in the head, neck, hand and legs - some of these were shrapnel injuries rather than bullet injuries - and lay still for some time, presumably stunned or shocked. Then he emerged from the boat with his hands up.
So they didn’t quite “show up and open fire”, but it was close to that. Recall that when both brothers were intercepted on 19 April, between 200 and 300 rounds were fired, nearly a dozen houses were hit and sixteen police officers were injured, one critically. While the brothers had (and used) home-made explosive devices, they appear to have had only one firearm between them, a 9mm pistol. Thus most of the rounds were fired by the police and, it seems, most of the injuries were inflicted by them. A later investigation found that command at the incident had been unco-ordinated and the public had been put at excessive risk. The police officers involved had been briefed that the Tsarnaevs were equipped with an arsenal of guns, which possibly helps to explain their somewhat trigger-happy engagement with the pair.
I don’t say this to criticise the police, but to recall the climate within which the search was conducted. Yes, the police peppered the boat with gunfire, and this was consistent with their tactics on 19 April. Yes, Tsarnaev was hit multiple times, and was perhaps lucky to survive. Yes, they didn’t wait for Tsarnaev to shoot at them.
Tsarnaev was a BOMBER. He had already proven that he was a deadly threat to everyone around him. Did he have another bomb in his possession? Was the boat booby trapped? Did he have a gun?
Nobody was going to get close enough to knock on the boats hull and yell, “MARCO”.
Sure. The question asked is not why the police fired on Tsarnaev, but how he survived. And the answer is that what he encountered was unco-ordinated firing from people who did not know exactly where in the boat he was. Most of the shots missed him and, of those that hit him, none were fatal.
This makes more sense. It also explains why it wasn’t a big deal that he may have been unarmed, because fuck that guy. He was presumably armed with a gun, explosives, and who knows what else. He even ran over his own brother (needlessly according to the article I read). Fuck that dude.
I get now that they shot a ton of rounds into the boat, that is patently clear.
Now I’d like to know what caused them to fire. Again, I’m not defending the guy or disparaging police actions, but it just seems weird for cops to just open fire on a covered boat without provocation.
Perhaps we define “provocation” differently. This bomber and cop killer was told to surrender, he refused, the police attempted to diffuse a dangerous situation with gunfire. The bomber/cop killer could have surrendered earlier.
The police are not society’s revenge squad. They should not get to carelessly exercise extreme force unless they have to. Dumping 1000 rounds into a sail boat shows less of a concern for public safety than for killing the suspect.
In this case, public safety demanded killing the suspect. He had just:
Bombed the Boston marathon, killing and maiming hundreds.
Killed an MIT police officer.
Engaged in a car chase and shootout with police in a residential neighborhood.
Now he is hiding in a boat. He knows he is cornered. His brother has been killed. You don’t know if he has a weapon, more bombs, or what condition he is in. He could be in perfect health, desperate, and crazed. At any moment, he could pop out from under the boat and shoot at you.
I’d say “shoot the fuck out of him before he has a chance” is a reasonable action to take for public safety at that point. Jesus.
I suppose it’s obvious to try comparing the boat shoot-up with the out-of-control shoot-ups during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner back in 2013. The Boston case looks a bit more defensible.
In the Dorner case, cops shot up a pick-up truck that (IIRC) didn’t match the description of Dorner’s truck, occupied by two ladies (who couldn’t have looked much like Dorner) who were delivering newspapers. (The ladies got a $4M+ settlement.) In other news, Torrance police bashed up another non-matching pickup truck containing a non-matching driver, and arrested the driver with injuries. He got a $1.8M settlement.
How many million dollars is Tsarnaev going to get? :dubious:
What about the boat owner? Who takes the loss for his leaky boat? By any stretch of legal imagination, Tsarnaev is liable for the cost of that. Fat chance he’s going to pay up. Would the boat owner’s insurance cover it? They usually exclude loss due to government actions, and the shoot-up was obviously a government action.
IIRC someone started a donation page for the boat owner, and after a week people had given him a lot more than his boat was worth. (I’m thinking it was 4 or 5 times the price of his boat)