<p>I don’t expect much from local police so I don’t see a point in criticizing them. I do find it surprising that Homeland Security doesn’t possess the technology to find a warm body on a boat within a reasonably small search area. Sure, we see the heat-seeking photos but that was only after the call from the homeowner. Can they not scan a large area and zone in on unusual hot spots?
And it’s incredibly sad to think that the FBI knew about Tamerlan. Time will tell on that part of the story.</p>
<p>Can tracking dogs follow a blood trail? Or do they need clothing?</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID X2 using CC</p>
<p>Local police depts. with helicopters usually have the heat seeking equipment now days on some of their helicopters so they can spot warm bodies on ground at night from air.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a local helicopter.</p>
<p>Must have been one of those funny “foreign” helicopters ;)</p>
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<p>So true. My dachschund, who is becoming blind, follows me around with his nose on the ground tracking exact steps I took.</p>
<p>Not criticizing anyone, but authorities seem quite ineffective in finding a lone, wounded 19 year old.</p>
<p>** BCeagle** what a riveting link you provided of police scanner
<a href=“https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27723601/firefightcombined.mp3[/url]”>https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27723601/firefightcombined.mp3</a></p>
<p>Was surprised to hear at 24.40 on the tape, a police officer says…
- This may be a silly question but can our cell phones activate a bomb from a distance " <a href=“I%20may%20not%20have%20exact%20verbiage”>/i</a></p>
<p>* dispatcher says–" yes they can" *</p>
<p>Officer replies * "Could you send out an alert for all officers to turn off cell phones " *</p>
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<p>From what I understand they were methodically going block by block through Watertown, clearing every house, garage, shed and so on. That would have taken quite a while. I don’t know whether they had tracking dogs but if they didn’t that seems like a mistake, especially if there was a blood trail. It’s possible the suspect was able to stem the bleeding while he ran through the dark, and then it started up again once he got in the boat.</p>
<p>My other thought based on the details I have read this morning is that the suspect may have intentionally shot himself in the throat so he would never have to speak of what he did. I am also curious as to whether he ran his brother over intentionally or whether he didn’t see him in the dark.</p>
<p>Wow, a lot of monday morning quarterbacking being done. They captured 2 terrorists 4 days after the bombing. That’s pretty damn good. This was real life, not a movie. There are always going to be mistakes made. In reality, our police forces are not really trained for this kind of thing. I’m sure they will review everything that happened and identify where they could have done things better. We are not used to terrorism like this. Learning how to deal with it is an evolving process. It’s easy to be perfect sitting at a computer, drinking coffee reviewing hundreds of news sources. Jeez.
As for the white hat terrorist being such a good guy? Not. He set a bomb down next to a little kid, tweeted, stay safe Boston, then went to a party. I have no sympathy for this piece of ****. Evil through and through no matter what his friends say.</p>
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<p>I sure hope Home Land Security, FBI, CIA, etc were. We gave up a lot of privacy to be safe.</p>
<p>^I agree, dkitty, “pretty damn good”! I think Boston’s response has been admirable.</p>
<p>I heard this am that a local radio station is raising funds to buy that Watertown guy a new boat, LOL.</p>
<p>People should step back. First, the kid was outside the perimeter being searched. Second, cell phones don’t set off a bomb; you can use one as a trigger and call it, etc. but random phones in the area won’t.</p>
<p>This may be unpopular but I disagreed with the city shut down. We don’t stop everything for bank robbers. That these were terrorists doesn’t make them inherently more dangerous to people. I also disagreed with the idea that finding these guys should be left to “professionals”. We saw we needed a guy noticing something. It’s a mistake to believe the professionals can cover all, etc. they set up the wrong perimeter, didn’t they? And in hindsight, after evacuating, why not use thermal imaging to look for him? </p>
<p>I’m also thinking of the many millions lost, the wages lost, the rent that will be harder to pay, the food washed, etc. All to find one guy. It’s not like he had nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>ELY: I figured that would happen. And yes, overall I think the LE folks did their absolute best under incredibly stressful and confusing circumstances. People who support cutting funding for public services should remember what the police, fire and EMS personnel had to go through this week–far beyond what most first responders ever expect to deal with in their line of work, especially in a suburb like Watertown.</p>
<p>But they did think he had explosives, Lergnom, , or suicide bomber type backpack, and knew he was despirite. Certainly this is different from a bank robber, with a specific target/agenda.</p>
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Really? After what they did, they were not inherently more dangerous to people than a bank robber?</p>
<p>I’m not so sure they were in a hurry to find him on Friday. I think they were counting on time being on their side, and that suspect #2 would get more fatigued and easier to bring in alive the longer they waited.</p>
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<p>I am potentially critical of the FBI/DHS handling of the situation. It seems like progress is only made when they are forced to abandon their plans. </p>
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<li><p>They spent the week keeping the pictures to themselves as part of a deliberate strategy approved at the highest levels. What that strategy lead to by Thursday the trail was cold and the had no idea who the guys were. Then they call the press conference for 5pm when there isnt much day light left. People start phoning tips and they are perusing the SUV by 10PM and have the firefight. White eludes the police because of the darkness. </p></li>
<li><p>They lock down the entire city of Boston and do a house to house. At the end of the day they life the lockdown and 15 minutes later there is a tip which leads to white hat’s capture. </p></li>
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<p>In the big picture DHS should have kept their file on Tamerlan active - he was already right in the wheel house of a profile of a bomber. When there is a YouTube channel promoting jihad with his name on it, he shoudl have been moved up for accelerated scrutiny. And the six month absence from a wife and small child monitored. </p>
<p>But thats all deskwork before there was any emergency. After the bombing why were they not working a list of suspicious people in the Boston area? Reportedly the fingerprint scan was the first time they had his name- and that was after he was dead. It seems like the FBI blew Tuesday and Wednesday hoping their facial recognition software would turn up a match out of all the drivers license and passport databases. If they had someone looking through the watch list files they probably would have id’ed Tamerlan as black hat.</p>
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<p>Operation Urban Shield in Boston May 2011.</p>
<p>The May 2012 Terrorism Drill in Boston was for bioterrorism (son’s workplace was part of the drill).</p>
<p>The Watertown Police did a good job in setting up a perimeter so they had some training on doing that.</p>
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<p>Some do have experience here though. There were doctors that had experienced war-torn areas taking care of victims on Monday. I’m sure that we have police officers in the Boston area with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have even traveled to Israel for training.</p>
<p>“Police chiefs from Newton, Framingham, and Belmont headed off last weekend for a weeklong counterterrorism seminar in Israel, funded by the Anti-Defamation League.”</p>
<p>“Though this is just the third seminar exclusively involving officers from the Northeast, the ADL has been bringing US law enforcement executives to Israel through its National Counterterrorism Seminar since 2004, he said.”</p>
<p>[Local</a> police chiefs head to Israel for antiterror training - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2011/10/27/local_police_chiefs_head_to_israel_for_antiterror_training/?page=full]Local”>http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2011/10/27/local_police_chiefs_head_to_israel_for_antiterror_training/?page=full)</p>
<p>My daughter’s school has a criminal justice major and used to provide regular training for police officers before funding was cut. She used to see one or two tables of police officers at lunchtime. They had their own set of classrooms on a particular floor. I imagine that police officers receive regular training, similar to most professionals.</p>
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<p>I would expect the FBI and Homeland Security to have people doing this. Sitting at computers in an office, drinking coffee and maybe eating donuts, reviewing hundreds of news services. What would have mattered the most was a review of the scanner audio or a map with the location of the SUV along with a map of where they were searching. Someone in a command center in Boston could have had this up on a big monitor too. Here’s the firefight, here’s the SUV, here’s our search area - what’s wrong with this picture? I wouldn’t expect this to happen during the night but estimates of police manpower were 5,000 to 6,000 people. I’d assume that those were people in the field and people in offices supporting them.</p>
<p>I don’t know if authorities bungled anything by not identifying #1 earlier. It does seem like they perhaps made an error with their perimeter (refer to interesteddad’s posts on the subject) and I don’t understand why they didn’t use tracking dogs once they had the black SUV in possession. However, I also realize that hindsight is always 20/20 and we are not privy to what was going on behind the scenes while these events were unfolding. It’s all to easy to criticize when you aren’t aware of all the facts.</p>
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<p>The important fact was the location of the SUV. The police knew this Thursday night. One of the police officers on the scanner knew that the perimeter was insufficient but was ignored. For some reason, this piece of information wasn’t generally made known to the public via the media but LE should have had it by the morning.</p>
<p>We are aware of the facts now and when LE had those facts.</p>