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Suspicious package shuts Airport station

Cops with big guns at Airport station in East Boston

Passengers allowed back in as cops got ready to leave. Photo by Mary C. Stevens.

A suspicious package at Airport on the Blue Line around 8:50 a.m. quickly brought the bomb squad and officers with high-powered weapons and dogs to the station.

Passengers were evacuated from the station and train service was halted.

Around 9:06 a.m., the package was declared not suspicious. A couple minutes later, riders were allowed back into the station and service resumed.

Kevin Franck photographed the scene on his way out:

Police with guns at Airport station
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Comments

"...the package was declared not suspicious."

Something about this statement irks me. It was suspicious before, shouldn't it still be considered a suspicious package afterword? Maybe it should be worded as declared not a threat instead?

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Yeah, basically, somebody reported something, a bag, a box, whatever. The bomb squad looked inside and realized it was just trash/papers/homeless person's clothes/whatever (sorry for the vagueness, I don't actually know yet what the package was, but the key point is that whatever it was, the bomb squad determined it was harmless).

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The package was "suspicious" until the bomb squad determined it didn't contain something immediately life-threatening. But the package could still be a threat. Suppose it contained thousands of "Vote for Doug Bennett" stickers? I hope they detonated it just in case.

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don't stick.

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What was that again about the over-militarization of the police?

Did the cops expect the suspicious package to start firing at them? Would the high-powered rifles neutralize the bomb if it really were one?

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Is it normal for heavily armed police to respond to a suspicious package? How would their weapons be any more useful then the handguns the police are already armed with?

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They're effective at exactly one thing: keeping up the mindset of fear, that we are a nation under constant threat of imminent attack and destruction and that unlimited money should be spent to neutralize that threat.

I'll ask again: in the recent history of this country, has an object reported a suspicious ever turned out to be an actual bomb?

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I was waiting someone to mention that.

An abandoned car with smoke coming out of it should be a concern regardless of whether anyone thinks it's hiding a bomb.

When was the last time your run-of-the-mill abandoned object with nothing else suspicious about it turned out to be a bomb?

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Again the marathon comes to mind.

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Is the concern that Dzokhar somehow escaped and planted this suspicious object?

Otherwise I don't understand your comment.

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Apparently ordinary looking objects that people ignored, even though they were located in an unusual place for such objects.

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People didn't have time to do anything about the marathon. They dropped the bag, walked away, and blew it up. If someones serious you won't have time even if you notice something suspicious.

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What was so unusual about carrying a backpack while watching the marathon?

And you know what? Even if someone had noticed the backpacks in the seconds after they were left on the ground, what difference would it have made in such a tightly packed crowd?

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Unfortunately, he did not have time to act before his legs were blown off.

Fortunately, he survived and identified the guy who dropped the pack.

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I think that's the point. If a person is intent on causing damage, even if you notice it won't matter, you won't have time to do anything about it before it's too late.

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Because nobody else in the world could ever construct a pressure cooker bomb?

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Again, so? Does the fact that someone once did so in Boston make it more likely that an abandoned item is actually a bomb?

Almost 100 years ago a horse-drawn carriage on Wall Street blew up, killing and maiming scores. So should the cops be checking out all those tourist carriage rides because of what once happened?

Unless you're surmising that the Tsarnaevs have cronies who are looking to strike, how does one incident that happened 16 months ago make an object on a T platform that someone got scared of any more likely to be a bomb?

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We don't know what the base rate is. We have a hidden markov model that only gives us a glimpse into our posterior probabilities. So we have to determine the appropriate response. I'm not arguing that showing up for every contingency (lethal weapons and tactical armor in case of an active shooter) every time is appropriate. However, treating it as a possible bomb is reasonable given the location (mass transit and at the airport).

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I think what she or he meant was that the bomb's placed at the marathon were not smoking, and were pretty hidden, but I wouldn't know what they meant.

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Actually, sometimes these "suspicious" objects are a threat:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/04/27/bomb-squad-blows-up-suspicious-dev...

the cops are just doing their job. find something else to complain about.

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The operators have been known to stick around and set these things off.

There are lots and lots of cases like this:
http://www.mercurynews.com/my-town/ci_26040661/clayton-police-find-pipe-...

http://www.wsmv.com/story/23263875/police-find-pipe-bomb-inside-apartmen...

Also the kid who was planning a large scale attack and kept stuff locked in a shed:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/01/justice/minnesota-attack-thwarted/

Then there's this jackass who did what he did:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/22511404/2013/06/05/authorities-in-wobu...

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I can only imagine that they are there to impress the hell out of anyone who might be thinking of putting a bomb somewhere someday, and then hanging out nearby with a group of co-conspirators to see what happens. Aside from that, you've got me.

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..guy in Colorado.

We have had far more public attacks from messed up white guys who go on a rampage.

I recall that a number of them attempt to include some explosive things in there to spice up the mayhem along with whatever firearm arouses them.

So they trot out the swat team as a hedge against those ghouls as much as any likely problem from a terrorist.

This whole thread has been an interesting study of mind blindness to those who most resemble us.. are us... while speculating on imaginary and presumably swarthy foreign boogeymen.

You're fixated on that immigrant while Dylan Klebold is slaughtering your kids.

The cops probably have to work with the stats and patterns and be as prepared for little Adam Lanza as they are for the rebirth of Jihadists.

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We have had far more public attacks from messed up white guys who go on a rampage.

Far more than what?

Is there any evidence that the frequency or severity of mass shooting attacks has changed over the past 50 years?

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I didn't realize Beacon hill was so isolated.

And do remember I'm covering the bomb/gun mix as well and it's all apocryphal but well known.

Now Perry Mason, get crackin on your own summary, (apocryphal works) of all the furriners running amok with guns or bombs or both here and you do have the entire continent to play with.

We can go back to Timothy McVeigh and his odd crew, or The Una Bomber.

Maybe Charles Whitman was before your time.

There was a run of mail men for a while which made 'going postal' a euphemism.

Now I have a loathing for celebrating these suckfish by tossing their names around so I'll stick with incident descriptions known to many and easy to look up.

There was the NH guy who shot up the abortion clinic here in, what, the late 80s? Another NH guy shot a cop and set his place on fire last spring.

Adam Lanza is his own monument. The kid who shot Gabby Giffords in Arizona, the batman nutjob who shot up a movie theater and wired his apartment with incendiary bombs.

There were several deranged young white guy gun messes over the ten years I lived in Seattle, one particularly awful one involved a bunch of kids at a party, usual shit, narcissistic loner.

And how can we forget the guy who murdered his wife and then blew up his toddlers in Puyallup, (extra points if you can pronounce it).

We have a bunch of infantile doofuses who easily get guns and bomb stuff and when they flip out, lots of people might die.

This haunts cops. Word gets around. It's probably their worst nightmare. It's us, not some menacing foreigner.

Cops have to prepare for that. Think of how the Lanza mess resonated through the region, how it affected public schools and most particularly the people who had to handle the victims.

If you're gonna try feeble gotcha stunts aim a little higher, will ya?

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rifle, it only looks scary. In fact its more accurate than a hand gun and has the same rate of fire.

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But if the cops get a report of something suspicious, especially near Logan Airport (where 9/11 basically started), wouldn't you want them to respond ready for action, just in case? Chances are it's nothing and there are no terrorists/lunatics in the vicinity, so they can all quickly pack up and go back to wherever it is they stay when not responding to suspicious-package calls. It's not like they're showing up at a peaceful protest and aiming laser sights at innocent people.

The fire department does pretty much the same thing when they get a call about a possible fire - they send in more than just the bare minimum, just in case. Most of the times, they just quickly send most of the trucks back, when it turns out it's just burning food on the stove, but on those rare occasions when there's a major fire breaking out, it makes sense.

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...But a few fire trucks are a lot less intimidating than a bunch of police officers in fatigues, assault rifles and body armor.

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And also not a major waste of tax payer money.

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Yes, it's an overreaction. 9/11/01 was nearly 13 years ago. For how many more decades are we going to use that day as an excuse for every security-related decision?

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I disagree. Even if they are 90% sure it's nothing before they even suit up to depart, it's a good training exercise to be fully prepared for anything in the future. If they take threats casually, the one time that shit does hit the fan and if they are unprepared, expect the worst.

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And when the shit hits the fan and the device turns out to be a bomb, high-powered weaponry is going to help exactly how?

It's that same attitude that leads to incidents such as this --

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stun-grenade-dr...

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What if there's an active shooter along with the threat? I see nothing wrong with being prepared.

One of the things about a random potential threat is that you don't know what's going to happen.

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Only when you view every object around you as a potential threat.

Must be miserable to live such a paranoid life.

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My job isn't in threat assessment, however that is the job of these guys.

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You assume there is threat assessment in much of the security-related decisions these days?

Naive.

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While we're busy wasting money preparing for the wildly unlikely, shouldn't we be investing in a nation-wide supply of bubble-wrap to cocoon ourselves all in?

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What if there's an active shooter while they're getting a donut? Maybe they should just carry them all the time.

Every trash can and dumpster in the city could have an bomb in it. Suspicious package investigations are nothing more than security theater. If someone wants to go on a shooting rampage or blow something up, they;re not going to wait for a police response first. The Tsarnaev brothers didn't drop the backpacks and wait around all day. They dropped them, walked away and blew them up. Even if anyone noticed and thought to alert police, they wouldn't have had time to do anything.

If anyone thinks these military weapons in the hands of the police are good for anyone then you clearly haven't been paying attention to anything happening recently.

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carry their weapons all the time.

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They're for whoever planted it, just in case they decided to watch their handiwork.

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And what if the fake device at Airport station was really a ruse to have officers flood the area while the cunning terrorists blow up a target miles away?

What if? What if?

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OK and how would not having this gear setup improve this? C'mon now.

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Um, it wouldn't. Have you read my other comments?

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Is how in the hell are all those militarized officers going to handle a bomb? What difference would they have made at the Marathon Bombings in all the military gear that even military vets say they wouldn't wear in such a situation in an actual war zone? Any difference versus just being there in regular uniform with their regular sidearm, being aware, and clearing people rapidly from a suspicious package?

That's what is really bugging me this week - why all the war machine gear to do a policeman's job? Why all the playing army in the streets? How in the hell will it keep them from being blown up? What difference does it make for them to wear this gear, other than the feelgood of sporting a giant full-body codpiece of intimidation?

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It's about being prepared for any situation. What is the incentive to NOT wear operational spec gear if they have it available for a dangerous situation? A lot of this makes it sound like you're afraid police are going to murder civilians indiscriminately, but they have the same "potential" with a P229.

That intimidation aspect also functions as a warning to potential threats. "Don't fuck with the peace, we'll come out fully decked."

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Well, since any police response could turn out to be a dangerous station, why don't we just always have our cops heavily armed as they go about their daily business?

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Because we have specialized trained folks for these positions.

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"specialized trained"

you're delusional. If Ferguson has taught us anything, it's that these clowns have no idea what they're doing with any of this shit. You got SWAT teams throwing flash grenades into cribs, pointing assault rifles indiscriminately into crowds and windows. If you're not planning to pull the trigger you don't aim at anyone. We can go back to the 2004 world series where the girl got shot in the the face by an officer who didn't know wtf he was doing with his "non-lethal weapon."

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How many calls nationally have police departments gone on today 5 million? 1 million? 10 million? How many innocent people have died? 0?, 1?

Granted 1 is always too many, but Boston has deployed their special OPs guys on probably 4,000 different situations this year without an innocent live lost.

Training is bad in some areas, but it doesn't mean we should just take guns away from law enforcement.

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Who said take their guns away? Military style weapons on the other hand, definitely. There's no need.

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So are you talking about image? Or actual danger to the public?

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Yes, police handguns kill more people than rifles. But handguns are their main tool. Obviously there is a need for law enforcement in this country to have weapons to protect themselves and the public. They do not need military weapons, they are a police force to protect and serve, not an army to defend and invade.

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And why do we need to deploy special ops 4,000 times? Such a huge waste of money. The use of special ops and swat teams is out of control, but i guess if you have the toys you might as well play with them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/06/20/the-overuse-of-s-w-a-t-t...

If you give cops all these combat weapons and dressing them up like soldiers, they'll start thinking they are at war, and they start looking at citizens like enemy combatants. Not a good direction to be heading in.

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Drownings, securing crime scenes, scenes where people were shot or murdered, amber alerts, parades, fires, bomb calls, school threats, kidnappings, hostage negotiations, etc.

You say they are out of control but the get paid the same as every other cop, and they rarely kill or hurt anyone.

It is still a small minority (see infowars) who feel real paranoid or like an enemy combatant.

Would it make you feel any better if they wore shirts and ties for summer raids? Or wear jeans and polo shirts for casual Friday operations? They have one standard for your worse case scenerio.

If you didn't have these trained officers, you would simpy have lesser trained officers (with handguns) to respond to the same situations.

Racial profiling should be a much bigger concern than the equipment that officers have

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( video from another story, but worth watching again )

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I for one want to see this magical uniform and rifle that instantly removes all judgement, training and humanity from a police officer that makes them view civilians as terrorists. Sounds like typical ACAB crowd nonsense.

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You must have missed the protests in Missouri this week. The cops shot a friggin state senator with tear gas and rubber bullets and were screaming at the protestors calling them filthy animals. There was no judgement or humanity there. All it took were troopers with some common sense to quell the riots, not military weapons and tanks.

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I suspect they are less well trained and disciplined than the police officers of a city like Boston.

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The BPD sure showed their trainingg and discipline on man hunt day. They literally shut down the entire city for a day and couldn't even catch a teenager who was only a few blocks away from where they lost him. And then they shot hundreds of times in a sail boat after they knew he was unarmed.

Also no one likes to point out the Richard Donahue wasn't shot by a Tsarnaev brother, but by the fucking cops who were so excited to use their weapons and be John McClain that they were shooting aimlessly into a crossfire, spraying bullets into home all throughout the neighborhood.

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chasing terrorists around should be nice and clean with an easy solution. There are certainly things that could have been done better on that day, but in the end no one got killed and the suspect was captured.

What do you recommend doing next time? Knowing that there was still intelligence (false information) that there were more terrorist cells around with more bombs, terrorists, weapons, etc.

If the Boston police or state police didn't do anything, the FBI and the feds would have done the same thing, but it would have taken them longer to set up.

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You would think that people who were operating in a war zone would have that idea in mind ... but even those people say that the gear is excessive and the training is nonexistent.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/ferguson-cri...
www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/police-militariz...

Paul Szoldra, a former U.S. Marine, broke down some of the equipment he's seen law enforcement officials equipped with: short-barreled 5.56-mm rifles with high-powered scopes, six extra magazines, loaded with 30 rounds each, heavy body armor, military camouflage, and all of this riding around in armored trucks resembling mine-resistant vehicles used on the battlefield. Many combat veterans have since pointed out that the SWAT officers are more heavily armed and outfitted than they themselves were while patrolling the streets of Iraq or Afghanistan.

I mean, yeah, it is fun to march around with big weapons and gear. Lots of fun. I hated marching drills and shining shoes, loved the capture the flag stuff for sure. But let's be honest here: part of tactical preparation is that you have to balance the excess of gear you are carrying against the mission you are expecting to conduct. Excessive gear is a big liability. So is going in like robocop and forgetting how that moderates the reactions of the people paying your salary.

So - where is there any proof that this excessive militarization, which is mostly for show, it is necessary, desirable, or even effective? Especially when it tends to turn constitutionally protected peaceable assembly into armed conflict?

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9/11

There's your proof.

</sarcasm>

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So do we just get rid of this stuff the PD has? I mean, what's the end result of this discussion?

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Are you honestly saying "well, we have it so let's use it" without consideration to how appropriate it is or the consequences? Without proper oversight by the citizenry?

Seriously?

How about some accountability, transparency, and validation of methods for a start.

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That's the main thing that seems to bother people. Every police officer carries a piece of equipment that can kill up to 35 human beings. The special ops guys have guns that can kill up to 500 human beings, including those who have body armor and can't be killed by those with your standard glock.

Guns aren't illegal for the most part, so the police should be able to carry (or have on hand what is necessary to stop what ever threat they may face. In some parts of the country, it would take an hour or more to organize a SWAT team. This time delay can end up losing innocent lives. Places like Boston have SWAT ready to go in minutes, just in case something happens.

The guns shouldn't bother people (it seems like they do for whatever reason), its the training that people should worry about. Training, not militarization or guns is what probably killed Mr. Brown in MO, and training is what killed Ms Snelgrove in 2004

Look at this Bundy standoff out west, where law enforcement officers had high powered weapons pointed in many ceases, but seemed to be well trained and restrained (as well as the militia was) to end up with a peaceful ending.

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Peaceful ending? Law enforcement walked away from a criminal felon and his pals who threatened law enforcement with their own weapons. Luckily for them they were white so the police just walked away, while black kids get shot even though when they are unarmed.

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But race doesn't really have anything to do with those situations. So you want them to do something like Ruby Ridge or Waco? That really is your only outcome with those guys. And you make a good point. If citizens don't want to be arrested, they can just arm themselves to the teeth and hope the government goes away. Its has happed a few times in Texas recently.

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How does it turn peaceful assembly into armed conflict simply by existing? or is it just the "image"

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Read through the web site discussions by veterans in war zones as a start.

Also, when militarized police get the idea that they are present to command and control "civillians" instead of protect and serve their fellow citizens, the ending is rarely good.

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This mentality would fit well with living in Russia!!

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.

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.

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.

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Well said! The Ferguson episode just this week is a prime example of over militarized police force. A couple of years ago I may have sided with the police a bit more, but the reality is Paul Rand is right on this one There's no reason local departments need to be armed like the military.
After watching the Watertown episode unfold, the thought of some of these people with access to such armament is frightening.

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Not an overreaction imo because 4/15/13 was only about a year and 4 months ago.

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So?

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So, a response capable of protecting Boston's mass transit infrastructure in the next year following a major tragic attack in the heart of our city is not an overreaction in my opinion, regardless of 9/11, as you say, being 13 years ago.

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That whole clusterf$ck in Watertown in response to the marathon bombings should actually make the case for LESS force, not more.

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Sure agree Watertown was incredibly too heavy by my standards... But in this case to me (and I respect differences of opinion here...) having a squad that is trained to respond to a suspicious package and the possibility of a remote detonation by a lurking terrorist or other packages on a MBTA platform -- is a much different animal from Watertown and doesn't impact this police procedure.

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How do heavily armed cops protect against bombings, especially when the perpetrators may be suicide attackers and have little regard for their own livelihood?

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That may be impossible to prevent, but it looks to me like they may be training for those scenarios unfortunately… as in, if there is someone that tried to be a suicide bomber at that scene, they would have a chance to do something. Also some suicide bombers may have enough regard for their own self to actually not follow through.

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The 9/11 terrorists weren't armed and had there been heavily armed police at Logan on that day they still wouldn't have stopped what happened. (You don't need a gun to take down a guy that at worst has a box cutter.) The fourth plane was taken down by normal unarmed passengers once they knew what was happening.

I still don't understand what cases require police to show up with the types of weapons pictured in the story. Even if there was an active shooter would the police be unable to stop the shooter with their handguns but they would be able to stop the shooter with larger weapons?

It is logical for the police to show up in bullet/bomb proof gear. Not rifles.

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4/15 instead. They were armed.

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Swirly's point is that all the weaponry in the world would not have stopped the marathon bombing.

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It takes a lot of guts to walk up to something that could potentially explode at any time. The MBTA dogs have already served our country by protecting troops in foreign lands. As veterans, they continue their service here at home. There's no modern invention that can match their speed and skill at detecting the presence of explosives. We owe a lot to these beautiful animals, and the brave human handlers who work with them.

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Dogs don't know any better, humans do!! Why do the T cops show up with combat weapons? One of those rounds can travel about a mile. IN AN URBAN AREA?

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The pictures say a lot.; notice the overall tone of the scene. These aren't the menacing, trigger-happy thugs of a small midwest town. The MBTA police are infinitely more professional and very well trained for the many possible events that can and do unfold in a busy urban area.

Any guns are pointed safely towards the ground, and the officers carrying them appear relaxed and confident; and they're not hiding their names or faces! Yet, if there was an active shooter threatening the public, these are the folks who are most capable of rescuing the situation with the least chance of causing collateral injuries to innocent people.

Yes, the dogs are fearless, but they don't run into the scene by themselves. A courageous human is tethered just a few inches away, and it's something they do every day. Don't discount their bravery!

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If they are so well trained how come you never see them on the ANY subway cars???

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It's genetic. Leave them alone!

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Bomb dogs are generally worthless...the just give cops PC to search everyone (like drug dogs)
-souce: Worked extensively with bomb dogs in Afghanistan....none of them found a single bomb....but we did find tons of bombs with metal detectors and looking at the ground. A bomb dog DID clear a alleyway which a squad then walked down and immediately found a bomb by visual inspection.

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You were in Afghanistan working with the dog? This is the first I've ever heard that the whole bomb sniffing dog thing is a hoax, or maybe I'm misunderstanding.

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Drug sniffing dogs have been shown to respond to their human's cues because they get rewarded for going after the people that their handlers are already suspicious of. This has led to a lot of false negative identifications, and harassment of course.

Bomb sniffing dogs don't have that kind of motivation, and their "hits" are far less common. Completely different world.

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nope it is all some version of the same fake PC game...see "money dogs" "gun dogs" and (keep in mind im not joking look at the link) "child-porn dogs"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/police-dogs-child-porn_n_556676...

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yes, i was in an infantry unit in afghanistan and we had a bomb dog assigned to our squad. After several months we stopped using it because it proved entirely useless (good pet though). Everyone in other squads I spoke with reported the same.

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I was wondering why the MBTA police recently returned the two year old bomb-sniffing dog it inherited from the military back to its military handler. The article vaguely alluded to doggie PTSD but it sounds like the MBTA police likely discovered it inherited an expensive pet and retired him to his rightful owner. Interesting.

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thank goodness they are ready to shoot the shit out of the package

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My question is: Why can't the MBTA do a better job at informing passengers of unexpected interruptions? I arrived at the Blue Line's State Station at 8:45 am this morning, and saw that the next train to Wonderland was expected to arrive in 1 minute. (Awesome.) At 8:47 am the digital sign still stated 1 minute. At 8:57 am an announcement about "police action" causing "minor delays" in service was displayed and broadcast. Then the sign returned to stating 1 minute until the next train! At 9:01 am, a second announcement was broadcast; this time the police action was causing "moderate delays." (No s***.) At 9:05 am, a third announcement was made; same police action, same moderate delays. At 9:07 am, finally, the digital sign switched to "ARR" and the train arrived.

So, it took 12+ minutes for the first announcement to be broadcast, and then, there simply wasn't enough information to make a decision about whether to find an alternative or not. (I imagine someone going to the airport could have hailed a cab and arrived at Logan in the 22 minutes it took to resume service.)

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... showing the live feeds of the platform cameras up and down the line. Passengers would have an accurate picture; literally; of what's going on in the system, and have a realistic means of knowing when the next train(s) will actually arrive. It wouldn't cost much to do, either.

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Camera feeds wouldn't be as good as accurate human-managed information.

Once the control center pushes the button to hold all trains at the next station, the signs should say so.

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The police response to suspicious packages takes into account what is happening around the world. Many terrorist attacks in other countries are believed to be training for an attack in the United States.
I work for a fire department and we receive regular updates on tactics used by terrorists in other countries. This is so we can quickly realize what may be happening if we encounter something out of the ordinary.
A couple of examples.
A fire alarm going off in a public building could be the start of an active shooter incident. The smoke from the guns set off the alarm.
A terrorist pulls the fire alarm in a large building . As people evacuate and gather in groups bombs start going off in the crowds.
My department has changed some of our response plans because of information like this.
I'm sure law enforcement's response is based on what could happen not only on what has happened in the past.

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I was on the Blue Line train that was delayed. Just about when it was over and the train was about to roll again, a woman on talking loudly on a cell phone said "it's all them foreigners they let in causing all this". Mind you, we on the train had no idea what had actually happened, except that it was a "police action". Until they started bringing the dogs through, a "police action" could have been a drunk that fell on the tracks for all we knew. A Blue Line train in the middle of heavily immigrant East Boston was not the best place to be mouthing off about "them foreigners", and, as you might expect, some guy took offense and started arguing back with the woman. Luckily it was just a minor verbal altercation and did not escalate further, as there would have been more delays to drag these people off. The mouthy woman was definitely out of line.

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what the woman said is somewhat factual insofar as our borders are not adequately protected. One of the federal government's main jobs is to protect the integrity of our national borders. They fail miserably.

And before I'm accused of being 'racist' or [fill in the blank], my parents where both immigrants. Legal immigrants.

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Please supply some support for the notion that people who immigrate or travel to the US, legally or otherwise, are less law-abiding than native-born citizens.

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I actually overheard the polices radio as they we're arriving to airport t.

The report was that someone had called 911 and said they saw 4 middle eastern males all wearing backpacks outside the train station talking together in Arabic. They walked into the station and all 4 got on seperate cars of the same train and were acting suspiciously.

Maybe we should all not judge something until we know all the facts of what happened? So no the police weren't going to shoot a package. I'd guess there response was because of the call that they received.

What if they didn't respond? For a call like that and whoever made it up and thought it was funny should be punished to, but it sounds like under the circumstances they responded and acted pretty professionally.

Whoever 'Saul' is who keeps just making bad commens sounds like he just wants to stir trouble and make people scared or mad at police or something. I was happy they came and handled it quickly and confidently.

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make people scared or mad at police or something

The NYPD and Ferguson PD are already leading the way on that.

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And we all know from past experience that the general public is marvelous at intercepting terror plots, especially on the T.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/18/rush_hour_manhunt_f...

>> What if they didn't respond?

Then we would have one fewer 100-comment UHub thread.

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I get that things have pretty crazy with police action and violance lately, but it sounds like these cops were just responding to a 911 call as they received it. That's their job after all, like it or not, they can't pick and choose which calls to go to. That's all I'm saying. Sounds like we're blaming all police now for the actions of other departments. I'm not a huge fan of cops myself but I also try not to Judge things or people until I know all the facts of what happened.

Look at Europe and lots of other small countries most of the terrorist attacks are on busses or trains. It's an easy target for them and could easily happen here. I'm surprised it hasn't yet. The terrorist only have to get it right once, while the police and bomb guys has to try and get it right 100% of the time. That can't be an easy assignment.

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I wonder if the person who made the call was the same woman I saw on the train talking loudly into her phone about "them foreigners they let into this country". At that point none of us knew what was causing all the commotion. Well, whatever racist nervous nellie made the call, I'd like to thank them for making me late for work for absolutely nothing that doesn't basically happen every day. Like no young Arabic men with backpacks ever get on at Airport Station?

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IMAGE(http://realizethelies.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/copmorph.jpg)

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