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City-council attackers taken out in drill

Profile of SWAT member in Boston City Hall

Among the several exercises during the weekend "Urban Shield" first-responder drills was a simulated hostage taking inside the Boston City Council chambers at City Hall.

SWAT cops from around the Boston area first navigated their way up a darkened set of stairs to the fifth floor, then, as they scanned a hallway with their guns, made their way into the chambers.

Reporters and photographers, kept back from the immediate action, heard a sudden burst of screaming as the cops moved in. We were briefly allowed in to see what happened next: Hostages and hostage takers - some now "dead" - were pulled out of seats in the visitors' area while SWAT officers looked under desks and up at Council President Bill Linehan's podium for more possible bad guys and victims.

Any hostages in the council president's area?
This one's dead
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Comments

Remember when the first question to Gov. Patrick at his first press conference after the Marathon bombings was that bizarre one about whether it was all just a "false flag" operation? The guy who asked it was among the small group of reporters and photographers at this event today, along with another InfoWars guy wearing a small camera strapped to his head (epic post-Marathon chewing out by a true Bostonian).

After we were ushered out of the city-council chambers, some city public-safety person held an impromptu press conference. Dude started asking her about whether elected city officials felt threatened by something, then lobbed a question about "posse comitatus" at her.

"I'm not going to answer that," she said and walked away. "But it's a constitutional issue," he muttered at her as she turned a corner.

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I saw the infowars clowns in Brookline today across from whatever urban shield thing was going on. They were dressed in all black and hounding some older woman who asked what was going on about chemtrails or something or other and complaining about boston drivers vs Rhode Island drivers. Nice of them to come all the way up here to spout absurd bs to citizens of a state they don't even live in.

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This may come off as insensitive, but why would city councilors be a high value target?

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I don't think the purpose of the exercise was to figure out how better to protect councilors per se, but how to react to a hostage taking in City Hall in general.

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The purpose of the exercise is to condition the Sheeple to accept Martial Law!

"Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly! Think!"

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I'm going to guess that the horrific events in San Francisco City Hall factored into what they chose to simulate this week.

Planning for the stuff that seems too crazy to plan for, is often a good idea.

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not sure if you blogged about this adam but last month or so the fbi sponsored an exercise in and around boston to see how different departments would respond and work together. the scenario is chillingly similar to the marathon attacks. a number of unattended backpacks with fake explosives in them were set in different heavily populated areas and of the 5 or so backpacks, 1 had a receipt in it. the detectives then had to follow the trail from place to place and work with one another to solve the case. boston was the first city the fbi conducted this exercise in and they plan to do it in a number of other cities. i want to say this right off the bat, i am not one of those alex jones type weirdos but believe it or not this exercise was thought up and planned about 2 years ago, strange isn't it..

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that a law enforcement organization used their law enforcement knowledge of a common threat source for a drill, that turned out to be so incredibly obvious that some bad guys actually used it.

That's like saying, "Oh gee, the BPD did drills on raiding frat parties in Allston that got out of hand...and then there was a frat party in Allston that got out of hand! It must have been a false flag!" Or, "Boston EMS did drills on measles breakout in a college dorm and then there was a measles breakout in a college dorm, they must have planted the measels!"

Law enforcement has intelligence to know what the likely threats are and practices them. When those threats semi-pan out, it means they're doing their job well by anticipating and training for possible likely threats. It does not mean that they are involved in some wide-spread conspiracy to actually cause those things to happen.

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Antiterrorism drills tend to follow the same logic as product warning labels. No matter how crazy and nonsensical they seem, they exist because someone's done that thing before, or at least tried to.

Some people act like the FBI / BPD / etc have never bothered to open a history book. So they're shocked when they see law enforcement drilling to prevent the kinds of things that have already happened / almost happened elsewhere.

I'd be pretty concerned if they had forgotten about the whole Eric Rudolph thing already and weren't thinking about nutjobs with backpacks before April of 2013.

You'd have to be completely ignorant of history to think what the Feds did was "strange".

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