Boston lockdown: The new normal?

The Politico ^ | April 20, 2013 | Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn

[2ndDivisionVet]

The unprecedented manhunt in Boston that concluded successfully Friday night earned law enforcement authorities the gratitude of the nation.

But as relief replaces fear, the debate about what this episode means for the future is already beginning. And one of the most unsettling questions is whether the violence-related lockdown of a major U.S. city — an extraordinary moment in American history — sets a life-altering precedent.

There are already worries that the effort to protect the people of Boston contained an element of overreaction. Local authorities told the city and nearby suburbs to “shelter in place” throughout the day and into the evening. They closed businesses, shuttered government buildings and suspended all public transportation in the metro area.

That decision concerned some political leaders and policy experts.

Former Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said it is “hard to imagine what could justify directing the entire population of the city to ‘shelter in place.’”

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, stopped short of directly criticizing the decision, but he lamented the development as a win of sorts for terrorists....

[andyk]

Nope (but he did). :-)

[MarMema]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlYXJt100U4

[dead]

LOL!

[Roccus]

I guess that’s a possibility. As to your question, I never fired blanks so I don’t know.

[La Lydia]

Obama went to Boston Thursday and said, “That’s why a bomb can’t beat us. That’s why we don’t hunker down. That’s why we don’t cower in fear,” at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The next day the entire Boston area was “hunkered down,” everyone there was huddled in their houses, afraid to go outside, businesses and schools were closed, transit was shut down. It was a ghost town, “Hunkeredville.” Am I the only person who noticed the irony?

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Some forward thinking by DHS in getting those MRAPs on the streets, huh? What timing!

[Sacajaweau]

If you give them permission, they don’t need a warrant.

[mosaicwolf]

Unless Martial Law is ordered/declared with related curfew is any, “shelter in place” only means something to those that are fearful and unarmed. It means nothing to me personally. I suspect it is not a lawful order. I might add, I live in a state where most folks are armed to the teeth.

[Billthedrill]

...it isn’t going to cycle with blanks, is it?

Yes, they do, but in order to accomplish that blank rounds for semiautos actually have to be more powerful than their live counterparts because there isn't a bullet to provide a gas seal. Blank ammunition of any sort is very dangerous.

[Zeneta]

I have seen reports that the police were systematically searching homes with no search warrant. That, to me, is very troubling.

---

But,, But,,,, but,, it’s for the safety of the community.

/S

posted this on another tread:

Except martial law was never declared. Except America wondered: if one nineteen-year-old kid could shut down an entire metropolitan area, what could a small contingent of al-Qaeda jihadis do? Was this the future of America under a President who declared in 2008 that he would make peace with the Muslim world?

---

This is the real issue going forward.

We had the snipers running around the DC Metro area and did not get this type of Police response.

If you consider the total control the police had on the entire city of Boston as a test, whether by jihadis or Gov’t it is very instructive for future plans.

The ability to “create” terror and leverage that fear through the media should be discussed in more depth.

You get a boat load of 1st and 2nd/3rd responders that are all doing the right thing, doing what they are trained to do, but if the “triggering event” is a set-up or planned in such a way that they can use the “auto-pilot” nature of the Police/FBI/DHS/media etc., we will soon find ourselves in a police state.

I suggest that this will happen, primarily because it can happen.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3010269/posts?page=17#17

[Romulus]

You beat me to it. Lockdown is their default mode. Katrina was absolutely their big chance to show everyone who’s boss.

[Roccus]

Much closer to my line of thinking than blanks or rubber bullets. Hope they don’t find some poor homeowner a week or two down the road by the smell from a house.

[Dallas59]

Muslim terrorists are good excuse.

[ConservativeInPA]

Sheltering in place is what happens when men are emasculated by progressives. In metrosexual terms, minute men takes on a sexual connotation instead of memories of our forefathers that were prepared to defend their freedoms and liberties. Presently there are too many Americans that are willing to cede their freedoms and liberties for a little security. We all know where that leads.

What I found most ironic about yesterday's sheltering in place is that minutes after it was lifted, a citizen, not the authorities, discovered terrorist #2.

[muir_redwoods]

The police action you saw in Boston is what we’ll face if push comes to shove. That’s what the government can marshal in one city if it needs to.

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[Sacajaweau]

He was there for one reason...to discuss the words: Muslim, terrorist, Islam "unrecorded, undocumented etc etc. Otherwise, made absolutely no sense for him to go before the release of the pictures and ultimate captures".

Makes more sense...even for security reasons....that he would go AFTER they were caught.

It all has to do with Islam....every bit of it.

[Old Sarge]

One huge thing that was missing from the wall-to-wall coverage of the bombing was an explanation of the “shelter in place” order. Was it a lawful order? Did it require executive action from the governor? Was it just a polite request with no legal ramifications?

I have it on some authority that the lockdown order came from the Governor.

There was also a report that callers into the local Fox affiliate (FOX-25) stated that power was out over three areas of Boston, affecting the cel towers and Internet service.

So you had citizens, sitting in the dark, cut off from the world unless they had satellite TV/Web. And unable to report on what was happening.

That, possibly and chillingly, was the idea.

We were most fortunate that the images that did get out went far and wide quickly so as to not be dissapeared.

[Sacajaweau]

And their long guns beat my pea shooter.

[steve86]

Once he was cornered in the boat, you really have to question why even one bullet would be fired with any possibility of hitting a bystander or nearby resident. Why add to the death count from either stray fire or explosions? Once confined to the boat he wasn’t going anywhere unless an M1 Abrams tank filled with Jihadis drove in and picked him up.