Boston Police Anti-Terror Unit Too Busy Investigating Peaceniks To Notice Tsarnaev Kids

So there's all sorts of weird stuff turning up about the background of Boston bomber guy Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like how Florida cops shot and killed a boxing friend of his the other day ... after the friend implicated himself and Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple homicide and then pulled a knife on the cops. Oh, and that triple killing occurred on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and at least two of the victims were Jewish, so it was muslimterrorjihad and not "killing pot dealers"? Frankly, we will not have any idea what to think about all that until Amanda Palmer writes a shitty poem about it.

But it does at least seem clear that, as a DigBoston article suggests, the Boston Police Department's anti-terrorism unit focused its attention on a whole bunch of things that had pretty much fuck-all to do with terrorism. And god knows, no one has ever suspected the BPD of being a hotbed of competence -- this is the city that declared war on cartoon aliens in 2007, after all. On the other hand, if you're an anti-terrorism squad, you probably should be investigating people who like bombs-n-stuff, rather than, say, "Veterans For Peace" or even Code Pink, no matter how loud and interrupty they might be.

The article, by self-alleged Breitbart-killa Chris Faraone, looks at the disturbingly civil-liberties-disregarding actions of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC). And like plenty of other "anti-terrorism" efforts, the Boston crew found itself with maybe a shortage of actual terror cells, so it amused itself by going after people who were suspiciously non-mainstream. This is, again, not entirely new news; the ACLU reported on the BRIC's overreach back in September 2012, for instance.

But boy, howdy, what a lot of wasted effort! Among other things, BRIC sent police investigators to film antiwar demonstrations, to follow environmental and peace activists, and to soberly write up reports on the activities of people like Howard Zinn, author of  A People's History of The United States,  described by some Boston cop as an "extremist."

There's a lot of other stuff in there about the many, many excesses of the BRIC, but we stopped being surprised by this shit a long time ago, and while the information is probably important, Yr Doktor Zoom is always a bit suspicious of claims that any given disaster coulda woulda shoulda been prevented. For instance, even if George W hadn't been rolling his eyes, yawning, and making dick-shaking gestures during the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike" briefing, there's no guarantee that the WTC would still be standing. Would have been better if GWB hadn't been asleep at the switch, but too much indulgence in alternate timelines just leads to everyone wanting to go and Kill Hitler. 

It must also be noted that DigBoston's web design appears to have been perpetrated by a meth-addicted lemur who uses GeoCities. It's Friday, and we would rather think about something that does not make our brain hurt just by looking at it.

[ DigBoston / ACLU ]