Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

davefoc said:
Right now, it looks like the police made at least one major mistake when they allowed S2 to escape. It also seems possible that the delayed release of images of the suspect might not have been a good decision. Of course, I am making these judgments as a person with no law enforcement experience without a full understanding of all the facts, but that is the same situation that most of the people who are congratulating the police on a job well done are in.
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From what the Watertown police chief said, I'm not sure I'd call the escape a mistake on the part of police.

There were six officers at the gunfight. Tamerlan had just been tackled and they were trying to arrest him when Dzhokhar took off in the SUV in the direction of the officers. The officers (who may have been low on ammo, but I'm unsure) were apparently focused on Tamerlan to the neglect of Dzhokhar until the last moment, when they jumped out of the way.

Following this, they discovered one of the officers was seriously wounded and needed immediate attention, which may have facilitated Dzhokhar's escape.

It's hard to know exactly what happened or what sort of chaotic scene this was, so I'd be reluctant to call this a mistake. If there were only six officers on hand dealing with this situation, I'd guess their actions were closer to heroic than bungling. (We can ask whether there should have been more available on-scene, but again, it's hard to know where others were, why they weren't closer, how long after the vehicle was spotted before the firefight, etc.)
 
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And it wasn't "internet sleuths" that forced an innocent man to strip naked in front of cameras in public, or handcuffed and detained and questioned a number of other innocent people. That was done by trained professionals and IMHO was far worse than speculation on social media sites.
 
WildCat said:
Not playing games. What do you think should be done?
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I think that what should be done is this: people should know that internet sleuths did very little if any good in this case, and the public speculations caused harm.

One hopes that public admonishment will diminish similar harm in the future.

But maybe not. If not, that's too bad. But I don't advocate any change to the law nor do I think that the apparent futility of criticism means one shouldn't criticize.

So, that's it. When people behave badly (but within the law), then we should say they've behaved badly.
 
phiwum said:
I think that what should be done is this: people should know that internet sleuths did very little if any good in this case, and the public speculations caused harm.

One hopes that public admonishment will diminish similar harm in the future.

But maybe not. If not, that's too bad. But I don't advocate any change to the law nor do I think that the apparent futility of criticism means one shouldn't criticize.

So, that's it. When people behave badly (but within the law), then we should say they've behaved badly.
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Maybe if the FBI had released the video of the suspects they had earlier the perps would have been identified sooner, social media speculation wouldn't have been on other people, and an MIT police officer would still be alive.
 
It's emerging that the crowd sourced analysis was a disaster. It looks like nobody involved in that fiasco noticed the two actual suspects.
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There was never any intention of the public identifying the suspects using pictures. There was a request to the public to submit any and every photo, video, etc that they possibly had so that the FBI could use that data in their investigation to try to identify possible suspects.

They never asked the public to figure out who it was for them, but of course people are going to want to try to figure things out themselves.
 
WildCat said:
And it wasn't "internet sleuths" that forced an innocent man to strip naked in front of cameras in public, or handcuffed and detained and questioned a number of other innocent people. That was done by trained professionals and IMHO was far worse than speculation on social media sites.
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Honestly?

That's worse than publicly naming a missing man as a suspect? And causing such a negative reaction that the family (temporarily) took down the site intended to publicize his case? Or the high school student publicly identified as a suspect?

The police were cautious to the point of forcing an innocent man to strip before detaining him. That's very unusual, but I don't regard it as nearly as great a harm as idle and public speculation on the identity of the bombers.

There's a big difference: Reddit Scooby-dooers, while well-intentioned, were not reacting to an immediately and apparently dangerous situation, as the on-scene cops were. They were making very public and regrettable accusations from the comfort of their keyboards and with the luxury of time to consider the implications.
 
zeggman said:
It's definitely true that they released the information that one suspect had a white baseball cap turned backward 24 hours before they held the press conference at which the images were made public.
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My recollection was that every time reporters said they were looking for "backwards white hat with light hoodie under dark jacket" they said that this information came from sources inside the investigation. It was not an official FBI announcement. It was never said as anything other than information obtained from sources.

I took it as accurate and started looking for backwards white hats in the pictures. There really weren't any other than the one that I did find and it wasn't the suspect and I didn't say that it was.

But still the whole time I was thinking to myself that the info could be wrong. That the "leak" was false or partly accurate or something. I felt that was because the description hadn't come from the FBI in any official way and that it was such important information that it ought to have come in an official way. So I never put 100% confidence in the description until we learned that it was perfectly accurate.
 
William Parcher said:
My recollection was that every time reporters said they were looking for "backwards white hat with light hoodie under dark jacket" they said that this information came from sources inside the investigation. It was not an official FBI announcement. It was never said as anything other than information obtained from sources.
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You may be right. I don't recall anyone saying it was unofficial, and I don't recall anyone saying it was official, but it's unlikely that I would recall the qualification in either case.

The information was coming out in advance of the oft-postponed-and-finally-cancelled press conference the day before the image-releasing press conference was finally held. Even if it wasn't an official announcement, both the investigators and the suspects knew the information was public at that point. Delaying the release of the images doesn't seem like a wise move, under the circumstances.
 
Travis said:
That's nice. I guess it pays to lose your legs in a high profile event. Now my cousin lost his leg when a drunk driver clipped him and he went bankrupt, losing his house and everything because of the medical expenses. No surgeon waived those fees for him.



If I ever get cancer I'm robbing a bank. I'd rather be in prison getting chemo than free and dying because I can't afford chemo.
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That's just the way it is. Your kid gets molested by the dirty old man across the street... You're stuck with a massive therapy bill. If its an old pervert at Penn State..... Money for life.
 
Jonnyclueless said:
There was never any intention of the public identifying the suspects using pictures. There was a request to the public to submit any and every photo, video, etc that they possibly had so that the FBI could use that data in their investigation to try to identify possible suspects.

They never asked the public to figure out who it was for them, but of course people are going to want to try to figure things out themselves.
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No. When the FBI created a new page on their site and posted on it the two short vids and 2 or 4 (?) photos of the brothers (and updated with better photos twice)... help with the ID was EXACTLY what they publicly asked for.

It was specified that the public should NOT use ANY other imagery for the purpose.

I presume they also asked people to continue submitting their vids and pics for official analysis.
 
zeggman said:
So if it hadn't been for Reddit's recklessness, the authorities might still be sitting on those images, and the suspects might still be trying to decide where to explode more bombs, or worse, have created more victims by exploding more already.
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:bwall
 
When the FBI posted the first photos, the brothers attempted their final rampage that very night. The FBI believe there's a direct cause-effect relationship there.

If the police had released the photos a day or so "earlier", it's likely they would've rampaged a day or so "earlier"; but it makes no logical sense whatsoever to append "an MIT officer might not have died". Yeah, that's true, but it also might've been four MIT officers, or a few BPD, or some more civilian casualties too.

Reddit's activity was worse than useless; it had an actual negative impact on the total situation. Just deal with the fact. Don't get all personally affronted and "BUT BUT BUT F-B-AARRRRLLLLLGH" about it. They found the right suspects and caught them both.
 
Caper said:
That's just the way it is. Your kid gets molested by the dirty old man across the street... You're stuck with a massive therapy bill. If its an old pervert at Penn State..... Money for life.
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Was there a settlement in the Penn State/Sandusky mess? How about a link stating that anyone has gotten "money for life".
 
zeggman said:
So if it hadn't been for Reddit's recklessness, the authorities might still be sitting on those images, and the suspects might still be trying to decide where to explode more bombs, or worse, have created more victims by exploding more already.
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Let's say yes. What conclusion do you draw from this?

Do we conclude that, because the outcome might have been otherwise worse, we should congratulate the Internet Sleuths for the fine work they did when they publicized names of innocent persons as suspects?

That, because their online shenanigens were a distraction and harm to the real investigation to the extent that the FBI considered that a reason to release the photos, resulting in a dangerous showdown, the Reddit Scooby-doo crew deserve kudos for a job well done?

Or shall we conclude that, because of the regrettable online activities, the FBI may have changed their preferred schedule of publication of the images, and this change seems to have precipitated the bizarre events of Friday, but we don't know what would have happened otherwise. It might have otherwise been worse. It might have otherwise been better. It might have otherwise been substantially the same. Who the hell knows?
 
Checkmite said:
Reddit's activity was worse than useless; it had an actual negative impact on the total situation. Just deal with the fact. Don't get all personally affronted and "BUT BUT BUT F-B-AARRRRLLLLLGH" about it. They found the right suspects and caught them both.
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According to the quoted story, Reddit's activity was responsible for the release of the images earlier than they'd planned to release them (if ever). That's not "worse than useless," it's actually quite useful.

The reports from law enforcement involved in the firefight is that the suspects had an entire arsenal of improvised explosive devices. If they had not been killed or captured, there's no reason to assume they wouldn't have been able to hit more targets. Indeed, that may have been what they were doing at M.I.T.

Yes, it's possible (though not likely) that the release of the pictures had nothing to do with the rash actions they took. It's also possible that if the pictures had been released earlier, their actions would have been even more rash, and more people would have died.

You're not going to stop people from trying to help solve cases like this. The social media genie isn't going back in the bottle, short of a draconian limitation of rights that neither of us would like to see. I suggest that more openness, not less, is the preferable course.
 
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