NFPA Journal - May/June 2017 - 67

week in 2013. On marathon day, about the time the bombs
went off, a fire broke out at the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum across town; authorities first thought
the events were connected. (They weren't.) In neighboring Cambridge, Harvard's JFK School of Government was
evacuated out of fear that institutions associated with the
Kennedys were being targeted.
Protocol generally dictates that the area's transportation
system should be shut down in the face of credible threats,
but on the day of the bombing Schwartz and other officials
opted to keep the subways and buses running to allow for
the evacuation of thousands of runners and spectators. "Had
we been wrong, we would have been really wrong," Schwartz
said somberly.
On the Thursday after the bombing, with no suspects publicly identified, Boston's public safety officers faced another
logistical challenge when President Obama arrived in Boston
to attend an interfaith service with Governor Deval Patrick
and Boston Mayor Tom Menino to honor the bombing victims. Some feared the logistics of protecting the president
were too overwhelming for a city on the edge. Davis disagrees. Obama's visit "was very good for the city, despite
the fact there was an enhanced threat because the bombers
were not in custody," he said. "Especially in the case of terrorism, where people are attempting to frighten us, I think
it's important for leaders to ignore that and carry on as they
would. Is there an enhanced danger? Sure, but it's still our
responsibility to mourn and to help the victims."
Events escalated throughout that day. That evening the
FBI publicly released photos of two suspects, Tamerlan and
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brothers from Cambridge, identified
through video surveillance of the marathon's finish area.
Within hours, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police
officer was shot and killed as he sat in his marked police
vehicle in Cambridge; the murder was later linked to the
bombing suspects. A man whose car was hijacked by the
suspects escaped and alerted police. The vehicle was identified by police in the nearby community of Watertown, and
a firefight between officers and the suspects ensued on a
residential street; Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed and a transit
police officer was critically injured, possibly by friendly fire.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escaped, triggering a massive manhunt.
"Clearly our tactics were poor in that particularly situation," Davis said of the gun battle in Watertown. "Police came
from all over, and if you're not thinking about tactics when
that happens and there are no strong leaders, you end up
with a circular ambush and that's a dangerous thing to do."
Early Friday morning, another decision loomed. Following
a brief but heated discussion, the governor, mayor, police officials, and MEMA representatives came to an agreement: The
city would be put under a shelter-in-place order. The decision
wasn't made lightly, Davis recalls. Police were investigating
multiple leads and there was fear that a terrorism cell had
been activated. "We weren't sure what we had, how far this
conspiracy had gone," Davis recalled. Schwartz made the compelling argument that the area frequently sheltered in place
during major winter storms. A shelter-in-place order was

unusual for a manhunt, "but in New England it wasn't that
unusual for the government to say, 'Stay home,'" Davis said.
The public stayed put, many of us glued to televised coverage of the unprecedented manhunt that focused on a 20-block
area of Watertown, not far from the scene of the shootout.
Friday evening, shortly after the shelter-in-place order was
lifted, a Watertown resident noticed that the tarp covering a
boat in his backyard was askew, and that someone appeared to
be hiding inside the boat. In a dramatic finale, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev emerged from the boat, bleeding and critically wounded,
the red dot of a sniper's laser sight resting on his forehead. He
was apprehended by police and placed under arrest.
Despite the media coverage, a weakness cited by the two
reports was a breakdown among public officials in keeping
the public informed while ensuring all public messages,
including those disseminated through social media, were
coordinated and validated. In the immediate aftermath of
the bombing, media outreach was excellent. The first press
briefing was held about two hours after the explosions; three
more briefings followed that day. As new developments
dwindled, however, the media scrambled to fill the airwaves
with its own reporting, some of it based on speculation.
Photos and video clips circulated on social media. Public
safety officers generally did not adequately coordinate and
control messaging, Schwartz said. "We had public safety
leaders doing their own tweeting," he said. At times those
officials tweeted contradictory information.
A joint information center should have been established
and media briefings should have continued, Schwartz said.
The entire leadership doesn't have to participate, he said, but
public information officers can say, essentially, "I don't have
anything new, but what are your questions?" Such issues will
be addressed in the future, Schwartz said.
Fears of a larger terrorist cell proved unfounded; the Tsarnaev brothers were reportedly self-radicalized and angry over
the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deaths of Muslims in those conflicts. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to
death on federal charges in 2015. He told authorities that he
and his brother were also planning a bomb attack on Times
Square in New York City.
Ed Davis has retired as police commissioner, and now
runs his own security consulting business. It is unfortunate,
he said, but the role of public safety officers is to think the
unthinkable. "You need to imagine what could go wrong and
do whatever you can to stop it from happening," he said.
I asked Schwartz if the marathon bombing fundamentally
changed Boston. He paused for a heartbeat. "I can only say
that it changed me," he said. "And everything I see in my
perception of the world and my community is very different
because of it."
I told him that I don't especially fear being out in large
crowds in Boston, but every time I see masses of people
jammed together on the Esplanade for the Fourth of July
concert, I shudder a little bit.
"You and me both," he said.
STEPHANIE SCHOROW is a writer based in Boston.

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