In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, media and pubic officials fell over themselves lauding the Boston police and FBI. Jubilant crowds thronged the streets of Boston to thank police, FBI and law enforcement officials while chanting “USA!”
Pardon me, I don’t get it.
After we’ve spent $ billions on security since 9/11, the FBI, CIA, and Boston law enforcement seemed to have no idea about Tamerlan Tsarnaev (the older brother accused of the bombings), even though, according to the New York Times,
In 2011, Russian officials sent a warning about Mr. Tsarnaev’s extremist views to both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., saying they believed he was coming to Dagestan, a republic in southern Russia, to connect with underground groups. That warning was based on telephone conversations intercepted by Russian intelligence, including one between Mr. Tsarnaev and his mother, in which they discussed jihad, Russian authorities have told the F.B.I.
It turns out, the FBI never bothered to inform the Boston police of the Russians' warning -- why would they? Well, they might have saved the lives and limbs of many innocent Americans. (U-S-A!)
Despite those homeland security $ billions, the way that law enforcement discovered the bombers’ identities was through examining video provided by neighboring stores – which had clear shots of them because they wore backwards baseball caps, no sunglasses, and made no effort to disguise themselves.
Law enforcement only got wind of the brothers’ location three days after the bombings, with the brothers having made no effort to leave Boston, when they inexplicably shot an MIT police officer late Thursday evening, setting in motion the events that lead to their capture.
The Tsarnaevs were allegedly the most unsophisticated terrorists of all time, and STILL the Boston police couldn’t capture the surviving brother, Dzhokhar. The brothers’ dunderheadedness included:
- Why did they shoot the MIT policeman?
- They carjacked a Mercedes after killing the cop.
- They had no money and spent their time trying to empty the carjack victim’s account at various ATMs. The brothers apparently mistakenly thought that they could get money from other ATMs after being rejected at one because they had reached the account’s withdrawal limit.
- They ended up at a 7/11 around the same time it was the scene of an armed robbery, and were spotted on the store security camera.
- They immediately confessed to the carjacked driver that they were responsible for the bombings, thereby blowing their cover.
- They stopped for snacks, allowing the driver to escape.
- They kept his cell phone in the car, which allowed the police to track them.
How much more could the brothers have done to lead the police to them!?
Nonetheless, the police allowed Dzhokhar to escape following a gunfight, after which it took a full day to find him, while the entire city was disrupted. Below is my partial list of all law enforcement did – or failed to do -- in that period. Before turning to the list, however, here is CNN’s account of the police apprehending Dzhokhar: note the shoot out at the boat described by Police Commissioner Ed Davis at the press conference following the event, along with all of the high-tech equipment – robot, thermal imaging, helicopter – required to apprehend the seriously wounded man.
"There was an exchange of gunfire, and I don't know if he was struck," Davis said of the suspect. . . ."We used a robot to pull the tarp off the boat," David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police said. "We were also watching him with a thermal imaging camera in our helicopter. He was weakened by blood loss – injured last night most likely."
Among the misadventures by the police after finding the brothers are these:
- Eyewitnesses of the shootout said that the police officer who was almost killed at the scene of the original confrontation where gunfire was exchanged was shot by fellow police officers who were firing at the fleeing suspect.
- The Boston police were apparently at a total loss to navigate the streets of neighboring Watertown, which severely hindered their search for Dzhokhar.
- A friend of mine who lives a half mile from the shootout was surprised when no one came to his house searching for Dzhokhar -- what did the cops do all night and day?
- Dzhokhar was eventually found in a boat at a nearby home in Watertown, not by the police’s thermal images and helicopter, but when the homeowner noticed tracks of blood from the wounded fugitive.
- Although all reports (led on by the Boston Police Department’s chief) said that Dzhokhar was armed and was captured after a heavy firefight, the police eventually conceded he was unarmed.
- I bet you still think that Dzhokhar was shooting at the police when he was captured.
- Although Dzhokhar was unarmed, video shows the assembled police firing wantonly, despite the desirability of capturing him alive (that he survived was inadvertent, since only a couple of that mass of bullets fired hit him, thus allowing him to be questioned).
All of this is standard ineptness and mob shooting behavior by law enforcement. Remember when the vaunted New York City police shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant with no criminal record, hitting him 19 times (they fired a fusillade of 41 shots)?
More recently, authorities are trying to figure out how many times neighbors reported to the Cleveland police incidents at the house where three girls were kept captive ten years – a home only a few blocks from where each of the girls was snatched, but which police never noticed. Do recall that Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in California by Phillip Garrido, a sex offender convicted of a prior kidnapping and rape. Dugard was held 18 years and had two children while Garrido was supervised and visited by federal parole officers. Indeed, Garrido returned to prison for a parole violation in this time, leaving Dugard with his wife living in the backyard.
Yes, law enforcement can’t find anybody.
Follow Stanton at his Life Process Program