liz_marcs: Jeff and Annie in Trobed's bathroom during Remedial Chaos Theory (Calvin_Gasoline)
liz_marcs ([personal profile] liz_marcs) wrote2007-02-01 03:17 pm

As It Turns Out: Boston Officials May Have Had a Very Good Reason to Over-React

It appears that one thing that has been overlooked in yesterday's great Lite Brite Chaos.

As it turns out, there were actually two legitimate bomb threats in two separate incidents yesterday.

While the pipe bombs were themselves fake, they apparently looked real enough. The reason why the Longfellow Bridge was shut down wasn't because of Lite Brites, but because of one of the fake pipe bombs. Same thing with the evacuation of a medical office for Tufts-New England Medical Center on Harrison Ave.

The police already have the a suspect for the Tufts case, but not for the Longfellow Bridge case.

When were the simulated pipe bombs found? Right around 1 p.m., shortly before city and state officials realized the Lite Brites didn't pose a danger.

Suddenly, the late-afternoon hysteria — not to mention the pissed off reactions — on the part of city and state officials makes a hell of a lot more sense.

While the city's safety people are scattered all over the city looking for Lite Brites, they had two simulated pipe bombs in two different locations in apparently unconnected incidents.

What's interesting is that there have been some commenters over on [livejournal.com profile] b0st0n claiming a connection to the Boston Police Department stating that there were legitimate bomb scares in the city yesterday, legitimate scares that got buried underneath the load of crap about the Lite Brites. These people have been pretty much either ignored or made fun of.

It took one Google minute to find this information out. Note that it's a very short article.

ETA: Information about the two legitimate bomb scares are starting to show up in round-ups about the Great Lite Brite Hunt of 2007. However, the information about the legitimate threats are buried almost at the end of the article.

Fox12 in Providence has a mention, but you'll have to read almost to the end.

NBC11 in San Francisco makes note of the pipe bomb that was found in the medical office basement, again buried in the middle of the story.

Just pointing out that there's more than one source for it besides some commenters on [livejournal.com profile] b0st0n and The Boston Herald.

ETA2: The BPDNews, which is kind of an electronic feed that anyone can check into, makes note of the 1:02 p.m. simulated pipe bomb that was found in a desk draw at the New England Medical Center.

Once you read that piece of information, read more. It turns out there was a flurry of bomb threat calls into the Boston Police Department all right around that time. Some pointing to Lite Brites, but one pointing to the simulated pipe bomb found on the Longfellow Bridge.

[identity profile] coyotegrrrl.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 09:26 pm (UTC)(link)
But still, the one thing I can't get over, that I can't see the Boston PD's side of - the ads were there for WEEKS, and all of a sudden, yesterday they were maybe bombs.

I can understand their anger at diverting resources. I can even understand not recognizing them as ads and thinking maybe they were a threat. Bombs could be made shiny with light brites, after all. But...WEEKS! they were there. That, to me, is the inexcusable part.

Well, that and the idiocy of rounding up the artists and trying to make them the scapegoats.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Honestly?

I think the presence of the two pipe bombs and two legitimate scares explains a whole hell of a lot. The BPD is doing their job (essentially). They know the Lite Brites really aren't a threat, but because of two real threats they've got to treat the Lite Brites as a legitimate threat.

Should the two artists have been arrested? No. But I can understand why they were arrested.

As for the Lite Brites, I think I saw one of these things myself a couple of weeks ago driving through the MIT campus. It looks like a left-over Christmas decoration, so I can understand how people missed it or dismissed it. Is it a problem? Maybe. Especially since they really weren't anything.

However, it should probably be noted that when something that looked like a real pipe bomb cropped up, the BPD was all over it right away, despite the fact the city was already in chaos.

[identity profile] jakeexperience.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)
This story's lol-factor just got a significant reduction.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-01 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Fuck, yeah.

Like I said, the only reason why I even picked up on this was because there were some employees of the police department commenting on [livejournal.com profile] b0st0n that there were some legitimate bomb threats called into the BPD at 1 p.m., but no one wanted to listen.

I just thought I'd check to see if it was true, and low and behold...

Suddenly the whole pissed off attitude of city and state officials makes a hell of a lot more sense.

[identity profile] rufinia.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:36 am (UTC)(link)
(I was pointed here by a friend.)

Once someone called BPD and said "There's this thing under the I93 bridge, it's got wires, I don't know what it is." they pretty much have only one choice. Treat it like it's real, and hope to god that it ain't. Then after the news started reporting THAT, people started calling in from all over saying "hey, there's one of those things here, too!"

It's not inexcuseable. It's their job.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
Agreed. I don't blame the BPD one bit, even without the simulated pipe bombs they found. They were doing their jobs, and that meant they had to follow procedure for each and every single one of the Lite Brites they came across.

Where I was rolling my eyes was with what I thought was grandstanding and fear-mongering by the politicians after the real story about the Mooninites came to light. That's where, I think, the perception changes.

Once you know that there were two pipe bomb scares on top of what was going on with the Lite Brites, the grandstanding looks a lot like people who are legitimately pissed because those pipe bombs could've easily been real. Considering that a lot of their resources were scattered all over the city dealing with a marketing plot gone awry, it's no wonder they are out for blood. The reaction becomes completely understandable in that context.
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[identity profile] rainkatt.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
OK, that helps to explain a lot. I still think they arrested the wrong people, but... What I can't figure out is why the news isn't focussing on the part that's important, rather than the Lite Brights. Silly of me, I suppose.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:07 am (UTC)(link)
*snort*

Because it's more amusing to laugh about Lite Brites?

I agree the artists shouldn't be charged, but at the same time I can understand the thought process behind dragging them into court. As it turns out, because they were dragged into court, the artists started spilling about the marketing firm that hired them. As it turns out, it seems the marketing firm figured out they screwed up, and tried to stop one of the artists from going to the police.

So, I suspect it was as much a plot to get both the artists to spill everything they knew about what happened as it was to slap them around in public.

[identity profile] willowgreen.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
That BPDNews feed was really interesting. From the cops' point of view, the whole day sounds like an episode of "24," minus the actual explosions and, one hopes, the torture. Must've been scary for them.

On the upside, no tunnels collapsed on anyone, so yay.

This story has been completely buried in the Bay Area. On the front page of today's SF Chronicle? A HUGE headline screaming that the mayor had an affair with a married staffer a year and a half ago. Anonymous sources only, of course. They put the NYT article about Boston on page 2. The San Jose Mercury News lead was Al Gore's ties with Silicon Valley. They printed the AP story about Boston on page 8.

Usually I think I live in a fairly cosmopolitan area, but today I feel positively rusticated.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:09 am (UTC)(link)
I can understand it not being a big thing in the news in other parts of the country. In fact, most of the chaos in Boston was confined within the city limits. I work in the town next door and I wasn't affected by it at all.

As for the BPD newsfeed, God! I would've killed for that resource when I as a reporter.
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[identity profile] msp-hacker.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
If it's the place I'm thinking of, I can absolutely believe that a disgruntled employee made a fake pipe bomb for the Tufts-New England Medical Center.

Wow, yesterday seemed to be the day for bomb threats in Boston. I know the light brites were up for weeks, but two different bomb scares across the city with both of them fake bombs is just really, really weird.

And now, I'm thinking what would have happened if they were real bombs, and that whoever planted them started calling about the lite brites. And, yeah, Boston was hugely lucky that the fake bombs were planted instead.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
According to the BPDNewsBlog there was a little bit more than just finding a mocked-up pipe bomb. There was a suspicious individual issuing threats as he left the building, then someone in the office building found the mocked-up pipe bomb.

Right when they solved that, the BPD got hit with some bomb threats.

It does cast some things in a completely new light, like the fact that the city was still on alert loooooooong after they new the Mooninites were a publicity stunt gone awry. Reading between the lines, it looked like the BPD decided to act as if the Lite Brites were part of the problem until they got official confirmation from both Turner and one of the artists that the publicity stunt had nothing to do with the mocked-up pipe bombs.

It's Murphy's Law in action. The shit hit the fan all on the wrong day.

[identity profile] stephanierb.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 01:51 am (UTC)(link)

My officemate and I spent part of yesterday afternoon watching the back-up of traffic as cars were detoured away from the Mass Ave Bridge, which is like, a few hundred yards from my office. We had no idea at that point what was actually going on (we did know it was a hoax and for a moment, were wondering if it wasn't a hack.)

I think it's ridiculous that Turner didn't just request the freakin' permits. On top of that, they were placed under bridges. Why would anyone think that's a good idea? Ugh. They couldn't have anticipated the faux pipe bomb scare occurring the same day the lite brites were discovered, but use some common sense.

Thankfully I didn't encounter any delays on the commute home. I would've been seriously pissed if I had.

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:15 am (UTC)(link)
Well, it's a case of one screw-up after the other. It's looking more and more like the real fault lies with the marketing firm which: 1) Didn't get the permits or permission to pull this stunt; and 2) tried to cover it up after the bomb scares started.

The artists screwed up because they slapped some of those puppies on bridges. I vaguely remember seeing one on an MIT building when I was driving through campus three weeks ago (my memory was jogged when I saw a picture of the Lite Brite on the building), and I thought it was a Christmas decoration that hadn't been taken down yet.

Turner is responsible only insofar that they failed to properly oversee what the marketing firm was doing.

So, yeah, someone needs to pay. Since Turner is ultimately responsible, they'll be the ones paying. You can bet they'll go after the marketing firm to recoup costs.

Luckily, I work a few towns over, so it didn't really affect me. I felt bad for people who were trapped in the city for a few hours, though.

[identity profile] rufinia.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
The artists screwed up because they slapped some of those puppies on bridges.

Excately. Unfamiliar things with wires under bridges make people jumpy. Some of the jumpy people will call the cops. Once that happens, there's not much that can stop what happens next, which is the bomb squad comes out.

[identity profile] lydy.livejournal.com 2007-02-03 08:41 am (UTC)(link)
Only guilty people have something to hide?

I don't think that putting something on a bridge requires that the BPD lose its collective mind. As suspicious devices go, it looks about as suspicious as, well, a Lite Brite toy.

The BPD are supposed to be professionals. The pipe bombs, they look credible, they are scary, and yes, they should be paying a lot of attention to them. But it's the BPD that wasted a bunch of resources by failing to correctly analyze and prioritize, not the artists who put up the gizmos. The bleedin' things had been there for two weeks. In all that time, not one of Boston's Finest had never noticed and reported one?

Lots of bomb threats suggests no bombs, not lots of bombs. Bomb threats are incredibly effective at attracting police resources, but don't normally go boom. Blowing things up generally requires a bit more discretion. I wonder how many of the calls were from the guy that made the fake pipe bomb, if any. Again, these are the sorts of things that professionals are supposed to be able to evaluate. If every report of every suspicion of every citizen in the Boston Metro area were investigated by the police, they'd all die of exhaustion in a 72 hour period of time.

Meantime, it'd help if people would stop being so foolishly paranoid, too. I mean, what's the chance that a bomb is going to have blinky lights to attract attention, anyway? (Except in the movies.) Bombs want to be small, insignificant, and hidden so that people won't notice them while driving under bridges.

[identity profile] a2zmom.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
That's a bomb scare of a different color.

Why isn't the media all over this?

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-02-02 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
Because it's much more fun to laugh at people in Boston getting riled up over battery-powered Lite Brites.

I admit that this a.m. I was laughing and rolling my eyes at the continued stream of invective coming from TPTB in this state because it was looking like CYA, coupled with scoring political points.

Then I start picking up the rumors on [livejournal.com profile] b0st0n that there was something more to it. I pretty much blew off getting any work done today to dig it out, because that little piece of information that very few people are reporting puts the whole situation in a very different light.

[identity profile] vwbug.livejournal.com 2007-02-04 12:06 pm (UTC)(link)
This is a great post.

Also, I just friended you. I know you through ponders_life.