Frylock: Yeah? What about it? Igningnokt: Oh nothing, its cute! We have five... Err: Th..thousand. Ignignokt: Yes five thousand. Err: Don't question it!!!
Posted on 02/01/2007 3:16:22 AM PST by billorites
A furious Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed yesterday to throw the book at the masterminds behind a guerrilla marketing campaign gone amok that plunged the city into bomb-scare pandemonium and blew nearly $1 million in police overtime and other costs.
As city and state attorneys laid groundwork for criminal charges and lawsuits, cops seized 27-year-old Arlington multimedia artist Peter Berdovsky, who posted film on his Web site boasting that he and friends planted the battery-wired devices, and Sean Stevens, 28, of Charlestown. Both were jailed overnight on charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct.
“This is outrageous activity to get publicity for a failing show,” said Menino, referring to the battery-operated light-up ads for the Cartoon Network’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” which sparked at least nine bomb scares in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville.
Menino promised to sue Turner Broadcasting Co., the Cartoon Network’s parent company, and criminally prosecute Berdovsky and anyone else responsible for the devices, and to petition the FCC to pull the network’s license.
Attorney General Martha Coakley was put in charge of the case and said the companies behind the promotion would be investigated. She said the felony charge of planting a hoax device could be broad enough to allow prosecution even if the stunt’s sponsors did not intend a panic.
“To do this kind of placement of devices the way it was, an individual had to know or should have that it was going to create the kind of panic it did,” Coakley said last night during a press conference.
Panic was the order of the day in Boston as city, state and federal investigators, police and bomb units raced through the city seeking 38 of the devices, in some cases destroying them as a precaution.
Shutdowns affected Storrow and Memorial drives, the Longfellow and Boston University bridges and Interstate 93, while extra Coast Guard patrols were seen at Rowes Wharf and at commuter ferries.
“I cannot state strongly enough the seriousness of this offense,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley. “Commerce was disrupted, transportation routes were paralyzed, residents were stranded, relatives across the nation were in fear for their loved ones here in the city of Boston.”
In a statement, Turner Broadcasting said the light-emitting devices pose no danger and are part of a 10-city outdoor marketing campaign for the cartoon program. A Boston police spokesman said the company did not have permits to place the signs in the city.
“We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger,” the Turner statment said.
All told, the cost of extra police and activating the city’s anti-terror command center will cost Boston $800,000 to $1 million in damages, an angry Menino estimated.
Gov. Deval Patrick said he was not impressed by the apology from Turner Broadcasting.“I am deeply dismayed to learn that the devices are a part of a marketing campaign. This stunt has caused considerable disruption and anxiety in our community,” he said.
The bomb scare reports began about 8 a.m. when a MBTA worker reported a package with wires and tubes protruding from it that was stuck on a steel girder under Interstate 93 at Sullivan Square Station in Charlestown. The devices, featuring characters with raised middle fingers, had magnetic backs and were affixed to metal.
The reports spread throughout the day to the Boston University and Longfellow bridges, Downtown Crossing, the intersection of Stuart Street and Columbus Avenue, the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive in Cambridge, the McCarthy Overpass on the McGrath O’Brien Highway in Somerville and at a comic book store in Brighton.
The discovery of two more devices last night at the Massachusetts College of Art prompted another brief evacuation. By the end of the day, investigators had recovered 14 of the 38 devices believed to be placed in the Boston area and urged the public to report the whereabouts of others.
Just after three p.m., two bomb-sniffing dogs swept through City Hall, spending 16 minutes in Menino’s office. “It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this irresponsible marketing scheme,” Menino said.
Can't talk now, I'm hiding under my desk. There's a car parked outside and it looks just like a carbomb!
For about the thousanth time, they were not Lite-Brites. They were not Lite-Brites, they were not Lite-Brites, they were not Lite-Brites. They weren't. Saying it over and over again will not make it so. They were custom made electronic signs, not familiar children's toys.
If there is a car stuck magnetically to the side of your building 20 feet up, I suggest you evacuate!
Boston....city of wusses. Good lord.
They were far more Lite Brites than they were bombs. Go hide under a rock.
Seriously.
The hyperbolic knee-jerk panic is embarrassing for them and thoroughly entertaining for the rest of us.
...it would have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Don't drink the bong water.
BTW, when you say "evacuate," I hope you don't mean it in the same way as when Mumbles and his crew crapped their pants over some cartoon Lite Brites.
Frylock: Yeah? What about it? Igningnokt: Oh nothing, its cute! We have five... Err: Th..thousand. Ignignokt: Yes five thousand. Err: Don't question it!!!
they broke no laws except littering.
Okay, go to YouTube (there is a link to the relevant page at post 36) and look at the lighted signs being assembled, and put up. Then go to the copy of the FOX News report, and look at the sign with the exposed battery case.
The reason the battery case is exposed in the FOX footage is someone took the housing off! (The housing--if you didn't see it, watch the assembly footage again, and look at them as they are being put up.) The way they were put up they did not have exposed wires or exposed battery cases, and the lights looked steady, except in one shot which I think was a video effect or a defective switch on the sign. They were rectangular flat panels with their circuits hidden, and lots of LED's.
They DID NOT look like the standard popular conception of a bomb.
I still like the LED getting misread as IED hypothesis.
Well, they were "found" during the daylight hours. In daylight they turn themselves off. So the LEDs really weren't an issue, were they?
I'm going to really enjoy watching these guys get shafted by the system. And shafted they will be.
"One of these punks is going to roll on the others. After that, the rest of them are going to be in a world of hurt!"
There's nothing for them to "rollover" on. There's a huge billboard on I-75 in metro Atlanta with the same character promoting that show.
Instead what we saw was a bunch of swats eager to gear up with all their toys and scare the city to death over a silly cartoon network promo.
Now the mayor is fuming because he looks like an idiot. So does his PD.
Noone is going to rollover. Course the city may pursue them to hell and back having had their incompetence exposed.
Since had they been real bombs, they would have exploded before the mayor and his LE discovered them. Apparently Boston is vacated by police and civilians after dark. Because they hung them in plain view with cameras rolling the night before. But the focus now is that someone has to pay for exposing the incompetence of the city of Boston and it's mayor.
Nice language.
And all night long they had the lights on and were dutifully giving every passerby the finger. Their purpose was clear, if obnoxious. In the morning, they shut themselves off, and they were found, identified as suspicious and removed within and hour or two.
I don't know what level of omnipresence you expect out of the Boston Police Department. But finding and removing nine items in random locations within a couple of hours sounds like a pretty good performance to me. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
Didn't the people of Boston vote to end the WoT last Nov? Don't their elected representatives say that Pres. Bush ginned up the whole terrorist threat? Why are they mad about some cartoon promotion? They should be mad that their police haven't gotten the message. The WoT is a hoax! The people have spoken.
I disagree.
Welcome to the police state.
Suspicious Aqua Teen Hunger Force OH NO!
Hey You guys have convinced me. These fellows are simply great, heroes actually. Nothing like a joke from cartoonists. they should get medals. Brilliant people Artists.
I dont know what I was thinking. I have now seen pictures of this brilliant artist with his filthy rastafarian hair and realise what an artist he is. Please excuse my nbelieveing they should hav any form of punishment , after all they provide pleasure to so many Americans who watch cartoons.
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