So, for over thirty hours Police locked-down the entire Boston Metropolitan area, and still couldn't catch the bad guy. In wasn't until the massive curtailing of civil liberties and the lock-down order was lifted that an ordinary civilian located the last known surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Any case for eliminating people's civil liberties in pursuit of terrorists or criminals was decimated by today's events.
An entire neighborhood was blocked off by police. They searched, without a probable cause warrant, every home in the neighborhood. No one was allowed to leave their homes. Businesses were forced to shutdown, and income of workers at those businesses was lost. And despite these police state tactics, the police still had to call the whole thing off without arresting the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Some here are celebrating this massive failure and massive violations of civil liberties as a success. But the fact of the matter, is the whole tactic was discredited. It failed.
Clearly, there can be, in the aftermath of the shootout, and pursuit of the suspects some reasonable attempt to block off an area where a dangerous suspect is believed to be. But Boston Police and law enforcement personnel instead did something completely unprecedented: they locked down one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. And the result? Nothing.
The tactic seemed unwise to me, especially as clearer photos of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev circulated in the media and the internet. Law enforcement took their greatest ally off the street: a well-informed and alert public. In doing so, they wasted thirty hours of precious time and resources, and betrayed any sense of American liberty in doing so.
According to Richard Engel of NBC News, all of the jihadist websites celebrated the law enforcement tactics that left one of the most historically significant and largest US metros paralyzed. This is exactly what they wanted to see. Now they know: Americans hide in their homes in face of danger.
This whole thing could've been settled much sooner. It took minutes for an alert and finally free homeowner to locate the suspect. By locking down the entire Boston Metropolitan Area police slowed down the investigation, and delayed the eventual capture of the suspect.
Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither, Ben Franklin once said. And so it came to fruition, for thirty hours Boston was neither secure nor free.
8:52 PM PT: Changed the title to avoid a semantic argument.