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.
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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.