If I remember correctly, there was only one casualty as a result of the law enforcement officers doing their job . . one of the bombers.

How many people were hurt by the bomb that asshole set off in the first place?

*Mike drop*

That no one was injured during that firefight is a miracle.

Friendly fire led to officer's shooting during Boston manhunt

...

Now, almost a month later, two police sources have shed new light on exactly what happened when police confronted the two suspects in Watertown during the early hours of April 19, triggering a gun battle unlike anything recently seen on the streets of an American city.

Among the new details from the two police sources:

-- Police fired nearly 300 rounds of ammunition within five to 10 minutes as they confronted the suspects -- 100 more than initially reported. And that included one round that nearly killed Massachusetts Transit Police Officer Richard Donohue.

..

-- Police accidentally fired on an unoccupied black SUV during the mayhem. "In the chaos, an officer or trooper (or some combination of personnel) mistook it for one of the two suspect vehicles," David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police told CNN.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/15/us/boston-watertown-shootout/

Tsarnaev was unarmed. All it took was one cop with an itchy trigger finger and they all panicked and opened fire.

One cop did get shot. An unmarked cruiser got shot up. They were completely panicky and out of control and this is not good for a bunch of men in uniform to be.

Clearly, better training is needed for these guys. Boston hasn't been the wild west since the 1600s.

and that includes people in homes if stray bullets went through windows

merits. Pro-order people are disturbing. Those who excuse any action by cops because of another action criminal creep me out.

Because terrorists that use bombs are not members of that civil society.
I have no idea what you think was going on back then, but I sure as hell don't live in a so-called "civil society."

Trayvon Martin didn't live in one either.

Too many don't understand the NECESSITY of rule of law and restraint.
A just society does not let bad guys off. But it exercises consistancy and does not tolerate "on the spot revenge".

Thus why we now have people that sit in jails without any due process.

No, that is a world many did not want to go back to.

He got a trial, and already admitted that he did it.
What more do you want?

Go back and read the thread.
The point of the entire OP is not about the trial and neither was mine.

If vengeance is practiced during police work then there are times that there is no trial. Has that not been demonstrated enough in the last year?

Geez, I've just been commenting back to your comments.

And I know a whole bunch of guys that dropped off of the internet right after they signed the Patriot Act.
And some of them were ex-cops!

Lots of those cops were shooting without a clear target. Bad form. One of the four rules is "be sure of your target and what's behind it." That is, don't fire blindly, especially where civilians may be present! They are lucky no one else was hurt.

Having said that, they did a good job over all.

I spent half my adult life in the infantry and if we fired crazy like this in a civilian area we'd get our asses handed to us by commanders. If a civilian had been killed by the police fire it would have made an already bad tragedy much worse. The cops need to learn restraint and how to react without panic.

The cops need to learn restraint and how to react without panic.

But it would be great if they could learn to avoid million-dollar minutes in civilian neighborhoods when pursuing a lone suspect. Also, it would be good if they learned not to fire on their own people.

But yes, with the low standards seen in most police departments across the U.S., their ability to learn such "advanced" techniques seems unlikely.

Reading this hilariously idiotic post by someone named "Major Hogwash" has me laughing, but I really can't tell if you're serious or not.

"This report is bullshit..."

I used that phrase too when an objective, internal investigation disagrees with my irrelevant and irrational pretense of ethics and justice.

(picks mike back up, dusts it off, and places it in holder)

Oh, and the whole martial law thing didn't help catch Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Someone became suspicious when he noticed blood on his boat AFTER he was able to leave his home once the martial law had been lifted. Ridiculous.

Cops are unnecessarily trigger happy in this country.

Only 200 shots.

They were shooting at scum.

America those cops would have burned down every boat within a 10 mile radius. Maybe dropped a bunker buster bomb on the scum . . .

With rounds that are dangerous for over 1 mile. That firefight could just as easily have hit a child sleeping in their bed.

Absolutely reckless.

Like at a shopping mall, where the lighting would have been better!

Because, as everyone knows, the police have a choice where these things happen!!!

The terrorists? Well, sure, they would have cooperated fully, if they wouldn't have started shooting at the police the very minute they saw the police cruisers arrive where they were found!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about Eric Garner?

Sounds like they were shooting 'more-or-less in the general direction' of scum, or perhaps 'kinda sorta towards' scum.

Regardless of the correctness of firing, I do have a problem when LEOs pull the trigger without proper care or attention to safe procedure...

coming from this poster.

Not, it seems.

What's an acceptable total in collateral damage?

This reminds me of a skit on SCTV.

Suspect shoplifts at supermarket.

The heroic "Harry Dirt" enters and shoots down several people.

The superiors arrive and complain: "Harry Dirt, you just shot six innocent bystanders!"

"I'd shoot a hundred innocent bystanders to keep scum like him off the streets!"

Read next time.

I can't believe how unable we are to connect dots these days.

Vengeance justice has already taken a toll in our history and while it was the truly guilty party that often received the result, there were many times that the "punishment" did not fit the crime". It also resulted in a lot of people suffering and dying that were actually innocent.

That is the whole fucking reason that we had (at least officially) changed that system more than 100 years ago.

Man, many of our people, even on the "left", seem to be really getting caught up in fear and anger based rationale that would indeed take us back hundreds of years. This is nuts if you really think about it.

It is most disturbing not that it happens but that there are those who think of themselves as liberals that would defend it. That implies that we are even closer to taking huge steps backwards.

that may result is further loss of life/limb is not "vengeance"

I am glad they killed Tamerlan Tsarnayev and I wouldn't have shed tears if they had killed Dzokhar either. Protecting the public is far more important than consoling some people's sympathies for the criminals.

I mean, the cops overreact CONSTANTLY, in every situation, and it is never justified, not even here.

Liberals are not in favor of summary execution or police overreaction. But many people here are calling for just that for these guys. It bothers me too, for the reasons you state.

It's not that they were firing at scum but how poor they were in their usage of their guns, and other mistakes that extended the chase putting civilians in potential danger. They're lucky is some regards.

The fact that 200 shots were fired, seems to indicate that excessive force was used.

could have lead to the deaths of the police or more civilians. Combat isn't about a fair fight. It's about overwhelming firepower and forcing the bad guy to give up. And it worked. One bad guy accidentally killed the other. The survivor is going to spend, hopefully, the rest of a very long life in a cage. I don't care if it was 200 shots of 3000. It ended as well it could have.

It isn't fucking combat and they are not fucking soldiers. Several people on this thread don't seem to get that.

I have friends who live in the area of Watertown where this happened. This is an area where many residents are Armenian descent, with hair and complexions very similar to the Tsanaevs. They were very much afraid of being accidentally hit by LEO bullets.

Of course, that's not the main point of the link at the OP, which is that LEOs violated their own rules on engagement in such a situation.

Although the most exotic ancestry he has is Welsh, he is dark haired with an olive complexion. Then he had a beard and at a glance could have been mistaken for the younger bomber.

His other aunt and I were very worried for his safety, not from any possible other bombers but from the police reaction.

people tend to take one side or the other, without nuances.

Anti-LEO hatred to the point where they are willing to let the Tsarnaevs go isn't functional either. They would have gone on to kill other innocent people.

Here it sounds like police were badly trained. Most of them will be for unusual events like this.

But the response was just reckless. The searches later that day with SWAT teams aiming fully automatic weapons at Fathers, Mothers, and Children and ordering them out of their homes at gunpoint was obscene.

The Fathers, Mothers and Children were worried too.

All it takes is some fuckwad to squeeze the trigger a little and a child is dead. It has happened - Many times in fact.

And the being ordered out of your home so they could search was NOT justifiable or legal. It was terrorism in it's own right.

Because from reading your comments here, it seems to me that you're forgetting about the people who were killed, and the people who were hurt in the Boston marathon bombing.

I know for a fact, that all of those people were innocent bystanders/victims of this horrendous crime.
They were just out running in a marathon race, or watching it.

Never heard of anyone ever accusing them of violating anyone's rights before though!

I led men in combat through two tours. Your statement indicates complete ignorance of combat and situation analysis.

The Boston police were not engaged in "combat." They were pursuing a lone suspect in a civilian neighborhood. Allowing police to operate like this is a VERY bad idea. It's miraculous that innocent civilians or other friendlies were not killed.

And that is what they did

Eight Los Angeles police officers who opened fire on a mother and daughter delivering newspapers during the manhunt for a rogue ex-officer violated the department’s policy of using deadly force, officials said.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAPD-Rogue-Ex-Officer-Christopher-Dorner-Deadly-Force-Newspaper-Women-Delivery-Torrance-Shooting-243564431.html

Geez, they only shot at those gals a few times, they didn't hit anyone.
Mistakes happen.

Dorner deserved exactly what he got.
So, did that bomber in Boston!!

You are aware that the Boston bombers killed another person, besides the people they killed and injured at the marathon, aren't you?
Where do you think they got that fancy SUV they were in when they were finally found?

Prosecutors in the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tried to discredit their own witness Wednesday, when it became apparent her findings did not support the government’s charges that the suspect murdered Officer Sean Collier.

Jennifer Montgomery, a forensic DNA analyst from the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, told the court she found none of Collier’s blood on Tsarnaev’s sweatshirt, despite swabbing bloodstains from the abdomen, cuffs, sleeves, elbow region, and back of the garment.

Montgomery says she tested the sweatshirt against Collier’s DNA: “He could not have been a source of the DNA on those items” @NECN #Tsarnaev

— Alysha Palumbo (@AlyshaNECN) March 18, 2015

The government has been going all out to prove it was Tsarnaev who pulled the trigger on Collier – bringing in Stephen Silva, a former friend of the alleged bomber, who testified Tuesday that he supplied Tsarnaev with the gun that ended Collier’s life.  

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/03/19/in-tsarnaev-trial-prosecutors-turn-hostile-toward-own-witness/

I know the bombers had his SUV.

They sure were a civil pair of terrorists, weren't they?

We certainly see Dzhokar near the 2nd explosion.

The women were shot and they fired at them 103 times.
http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/02/police-officers-who-shot-two-innocent-women-103-times-wont-be-fired/357771/


Police fired at the wrong vehicle after the Boston bombing.

Can you please post less FAIL?

It seems pretty clear to me that the people accused are the ones who did it. But I was surprised at the time by the fact there were no "friendly-fire" victims because of the amount of shooting by police going after two and then one known suspects..

in the earlier shootout, and nearly killing the suspect in the second when LEO had orders to take him alive if possible. You could make a case for the crazy firefight in the first, since the brothers were shooting and tossing bombs at the police. Luckily one of the two casualties -the officer- survived the friendly fire.

There was no good excuse for blasting away with hundreds of rounds when the suspect was discovered several nights later in the boat in the backyard. My brother lives the next street over and while it was nerve racking to have the swat teams search his neighborhood -his yard- it would have been tragic if he or his neighbors had been struck by any of the police gunfire either time.

Yes, the outcome was a relief, only a terrorists was killed, probably by the younger brother, but it could have been so much worse.

but it's not easy to shoot someone behind cover.

?836

excessive

I'm sure many of us would consider killing tens to hundreds of innocent people to get 2 guys rather excessive.

Most people trapped in their houses during that siege wouldn't agree.

Proportional due to the nature of the crime. These were two very dangerous individuals who had just perpetrated unfathomable heinous crime that killed several and resulted in many other casualties resulting in the loss lose of one or more limbs. Law enforcement needed to contain and neutralize the threat. I think if you took a poll in MA on if the responses from law enforcement was proper, you get an overwhelming yes.

that while the operation was successful there were a lot of missteps with potential for causing loss of life to LEOs and others who were not targets.

positive. The night that they apprehended the surviving brother, the streets of Watertown were lined with people applauding.


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in there with the chopper showing his outline. They shot that boat to pieces and were surprised they didn't kill him. He actually climbed out!

What I did not see was any questions as to the reason these two did not turn themselves in. This would have prevented any of the shooting and if the bombs had not been planted there would not be warrants for their arrest.

they made their choices

In a residential neighborhood, some 300 rounds were fired. Supposedly at suspects who were less than 20 yards from perusing officers. And in the end one (Tamerlane) was tackled by an officer (subsequently driven over by his brother). The other driving off with a single bullet wound.

Both the brothers should be dead.

Seems like you're right. Shooting hundreds of rounds at two suspects only killing one, hitting homes, and critically wounding one of your own officers sounds pretty bad.