<p>I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying, BCE. Police were not on the streets ticketing people and pulling people over (they probably were pulling a few people in a very specific part of Watertown over, but otherwise, no). People in certain towns, including Boston were told not to go out. People in other towns, like Somerville, were recommended not to go out, so there was a difference. Clearly some people, some for essential reasons, some for not-so-essential reasons ignored those orders and went out anyway. There was still an order not to be going out, which was the “lockdown”.</p>
<p>It was all over the news that the police had restricted traffic, so I don’t know what being in touch with your son would have told you. They were just choosing not to expend effort enforcing that and stopping everyone that ignored them.</p>
<p>The only place on pure lockdown was Watertown and immediately surrounding areas. The rest of folks pretty much stayed home because the subways, busses & trains were closed, cabs were not running for much of the day, and quite frankly we were all glued to our TVs anyway. Colleges chose to tell their kids to stay inside.</p>
<p>The pictures painted in some of the news articles that I saw showed pictures of what seemed like martial law and some of these were quite sensationalist. They said that Boston was locked down and the implication was that the pictures from Watertown applied to all of the Greater Boston area. People from other parts of the country asked me about it and I told them that these pictures were in a small city/town in the affected area. We didn’t have NG all over the place.</p>
<p>Nobody told him that there was restricted traffic or that there was a lockdown.</p>
<p>I was listening to the news and the traffic reports on my way down and there was no mention of any traffic restrictions. I figured that they would have been mentioned on the traffic reports. I was listening to the ongoing news in Watertown along with everyone else. If there were traffic restrictions, the media did a pretty bad job at disseminating it out.</p>
<p>I asked him if traffic was restricted, if there were NG or police on the roads, etc. He said cars were driving around and people were walking around.</p>
<p>I think the order was actually in place in surrounding towns (like I said, Somerville made a distinction to recommend vs the order in Boston and Cambridge) but I know that especially in far reaching parts of Boston like South Boston and Dorchester it was pretty blatantly ignored. Those were pretty far removed. I think Watertown was the only place it was really strictly enforced with a heavy police presence, but I think the whole larger area was on lockdown.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see why in empty streets, the suspect could have hijacked another car and been in any one of those areas very quickly.</p>
<p>I live in Cambridge and was paying a lot of attention to the news and the orders. The media made it very clear that there was an order to not go out in Boston and Cambridge. They requested that businesses be closed. I think the driving restrictions changed a bit throughout the day in Boston, but it was very clear in the media that they didn’t want people going out. My point about your son was that I got all this from the media, not from anyone knocking on my door and telling me. I actually initially heard about the whole thing from my mother who lives in another state (she woke up before me!).</p>
<p>Edit: I know that they also asked employers to send people home rather than make them stay, so it was definitely conflicting and clearly they didn’t mind some people being out and about. If I had a car, I probably would have done the same thing your son did and gotten out of there regardless of the order.</p>
<p>Why would they assume the bombing suspects were local? They could have been from anywhere, any country. I’m interested to know how many tips the FBI got, but since the photos were distributed all over, I’m guessing they got lots of bad leads, as well as IDs of the brothers. </p>
<p>In any case, the older brother was in a database with 745,000 names; probably more than a few were in Boston. The younger brother had never been investigated at all, as far as I know.</p>
<p>The Governor’s shelter-in-place order only applied to Watertown and adjoining towns: Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, and Waltham. Not Somerville or Lexington. Some neighborhoods of Boston are right next to Watertown, but others are far away, which accounts for the difference in response. Announcements were made (online, phone, tv) to tell people they could travel home from work, etc. Most people in the immediate vicinity didn’t go out because nothing was open. People did walk their dogs!</p>
<p>Jeff Baumann, the young man in that awful photo with both his legs gone, is at the Bruins game tonight. They had him waving a flag on the ice prior to the national anthem.</p>
<p>You had the problem of people that went into work early using the T and then the T shut down so they had no way of getting home outside of walking. My brother-in-law was in that position. So he was stuck at work until they got the T running again.</p>
<p>I left NH around 6:30 PM and I think that it was pretty clear to the media that the police were having a hard time finding the guy. I believe that they gave the all-clear in Watertown while I was on the road.</p>
<p>I called my son early in the morning after I spoke with my mother. I woke him up and just told him to read the news. He didn’t get any phone calls with orders to stay in place like my mother did.</p>
<p>I think the order was lifted right around that 6:30 time.</p>
<p>I think your son moved to Boston fairly recently, right? I got not phone calls about the orders but I think I am not on the Cambridge emergency alert system. I have an 860 area code on my cell phone and no land line, though, so I can’t quite blame Cambridge for that. I know there is a way to sign up. My landlords got three phone calls from Cambridge to make sure they stayed inside that morning. Clearly, they are on the right lists. Maybe your son doesn’t get emergency alerts from the city either?</p>
<p>He’s lived in Boston for a year. He did get an email from the Landlord that the offices would be closed that day. I don’t think that he has signed up for emergency alerts. I wasn’t aware that Boston had that.</p>
<p>I know that Cambridge has a way to sign up because I went upstairs to hang out with my landlords during the lockdown and commented on the fact that they kept getting robo-calls and I hadn’t gotten any and they told me. I’m assuming Boston might have the same thing. Especially with so few people having landlines now, I’m not sure how else they’d know who to contact or how they’d contact anybody. I have gotten texts before about severe weather warnings – not sure exactly what entity they were from.</p>
<p>My mother’s had the same phone number for something like 45 years so they probably just got her number out of the phone book. I agree that doing the same thing for mobile numbers is a lot harder.</p>
<p>My point, to clarify - since people prefer to read things to make words seem as idiotic as they can make them - is that the region shut down, not that police were requiring us to stay inside. I walked around my town. I found 2 stores open, one an ice cream parlor and one a sushi place. The CVS had stacks of papers left in front of the doors, all to be tossed. No drug stores, no markets, nothing but those 2 stores were open. A complete waste of money and time. </p>
<p>The police were looking for 1 guy. The other was dead. They had no other suspects so it wasn’t a case of not knowing “how many”. They issued a bunch of misleading bulletins about cars, probably because no one took absolute charge of communications, and these were repeated so I got phone calls saying “they’re in Connecticut” and other nonsense. That indicates a near panic. Why? Early in the morning, they knew the bad guys had a gun - just one was fired at the police in Watertown - and that they had some pipe bombs and a pressure cooker bomb (because they threw them). There was no indication the survivor was even armed, though it was rational to suspect that. </p>
<p>Why the panic across the entire area? I really have no idea. It’s like the word “terrorist” implies some sort of airborne infectious disease. </p>
<p>Consider the cost: the region lost a full day’s work and commerce, which means this overdone manhunt cost in the many tens of millions of dollars. Food was thrown out in restaurants and markets. People didn’t get paid who need the money. And so on. </p>
<p>Rudyard Kipling’s “If” says “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …” That is what was needed. And what we didn’t have.</p>
<p>I’m reminded of the games they play in teaching statistics. What would you take in exchange for a 1 in 100 million chance of dying instantly? Most people say they wouldn’t make that bet, but those odds are lower than you experience when you cross the street. I can give many other examples. But the word “terrorist” conveyed this sense - an irrational sense - of imminent danger for all. And the police and people in charge fed that irrational response. </p>
<p>That’s my point. Not some dumb crap about whether people were actually “locked down” all over Boston. Be real.</p>
<p>I can “bet” my last dollar that the man running in the marathon that day didn’t think that his son would be murdered, his little girl maimed for life, and that his wife would suffer a brain injury. Statistics huh? What were his statistics?
Yes… terrorists are an irrational sense. I would keep my family safe and inconvenienced for whatever amount of time to make sure they were safe. Gimme a break.
Geeesh.</p>
<p>they really didn’t know if the 1 guy was part of a larger network, and since they were using bombs, they assumed there may have been bombs that had already been placed ready to blow. it was an abundance of caution given that they didn’t really know what they were dealing with. remember 9/11, the air traffic controllers watched as a plane went off course and when “something” hit the World trade center it took a while to figure out it was the missing plane. Then there were three more planes. I think in Boston they were terrified (the goal of terrorism) that there could be mass destruction. at the least additional bombs, so the idea of people staying inside at least theoretically made sense.</p>
<p>Isn’t it safer to err on the side of caution. Would there not be a different “outcry” if the authorities didn’t AND more ppl died. It’s a typical situation of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.</p>
That one guy (along with his brother) killed three at the marathon and maimed scores of others. That one guy killed a police office and was involved in another shootout with police where his brother was killed and another police was nearly killed when shot in the femoral artery. At the time no one knew what other harm could have been perpetrated and was being planned by that “1 guy”…
It is no different than when they grounded all flights on 9/11/01 as soon as they realized the extent of the conspiracy to hijack and crash planes. As with Boston, it was the rational response and we’ll never know if there were plans to hijack other planes. The same could be said for the Boston lockdown, better to be safe than wait for another terrorist attack.
Lafalum put it best…</p>
<p>Telling people to stay in their homes is one things. Declaring the equivalent of martial law is another. Ten people were killed by the beltway snipers in 2002. Should they have completely shut down the entire region? A lot of people and groups changed their behavior and security was heightened, but day to day life went on. Part of the difference is the way we react to the weapon used. Even though those fairly rudimentary bombs were terrifying, only people standing next to them were likely to be killed. Thank goodness they didn’t both pull out assault rifles. The death poll could have been staggering. If they had somehow gotten away, however, I doubt the area would have been shut down. There would have been no charge of using WMD, although between using an AR-15 and that pressure cooker bomb, the rifle is capable of killing more people.</p>