That's not what I said and you know it.
They should absolutely go check it out.
But they shouldn't go shut down the city without making some educated evaluation of the suspicious item(s). Especially ones that were in plain sight including its internals for more than a week.
The whole city of Boston was shut down? C'mon... who's overreacting here? Or did they close a bridge because it was where they were sent to look at one of these gizmos?
Look, I wasn't there. I'm gathering you were, or at least some posters were, and got stuck in traffic jams because of this. Unfortunately it doesn't take much to mess up a city, especially trafficwise.
Here in Seattle, I can imagine a similar situation. If somebody called in a report of some kind of bomb threat to one of the floating bridges in the city I have little doubt they'd close the bridge to investigate. Such a closure would take only minutes to start to affect traffic. An hour or more and the effects would ripple to the other bridges and routes, paralyzing the city.
But remember: WE are the ones that have made it that way. WE are the ones that demand that "the authorities" have a zero-mistake quota. They're not allowed to use judgement. Whenever they do, and they're wrong, we make sure they lose their jobs.
All that police chief, or whoever, is thinking about is what happens if a bomb really does go off, and they had warning but didn't close the bridge. He's seeing the headline in the Boston Herald the next day screaming: "THEY HAD WARNING BUT DID NOT ACT".
I don't blame them. We did it to them.
At a glance it's obvious they're a bunch of lights connected to a few batteries and a blinker.
This "but we don't KNOW" stuff has got to lighten up. If someone doesn't recognize something that obvious, further education is warranted.