I've been on the side of the police in the recent bomb scare incidents in Boston. The police were unfairly blamed for doing their jobs and doing their jobs well in those instances. That does not mean, however, that I believe the police can do no wrong.

In fact, there are many recent incidents that show there are real and significant problems with the police, including (but far from limited to) the Jena Six, the tasering of the student at John Kerry's speech, campus police breaking a high school student's wrists over crumbs, racial profiling, overuse of heavily armed SWAT teams for what used to be considered relatively minor drug offences, and police outright threatening to make up crimes.

We have secret prisons and the right to habeas corpus has been revoked. The police believe they can behave with impunity, because much like the soldiers responsible for the massacre at Haditha or the Blackwater employees slaughtering civilians in Iraq, the police within the United States are generally allowed to act with impunity when dealing with those outside the power structure &mdash they know they will not be held accountable for their actions.

That is why I get so upset about the whining that occurs in Boston whenever the police do what they are actually supposed to be doing — it draws too much attention away from the real problems.

A 27-year-old man from Ethiopia was arraigned today at East Boston District Court on a charge that he made a false threat to "blow things up" at Logan International Airport. Ermiyaf A. Asfaw, a taxi driver who lives in Washington, D.C., walked up to an AirTran check-in counter Saturday night and was asked by an agent why he had stickers on his luggage from Dubai. Asfaw responded that he had been there. The agent asked, "Were you there on business or pleasure?" According to prosecutors, Asfaw responded: "No. I'm Al Qaeda. I'm with them, and I'm here to blow things up." The agent responded that his statement was not funny and was against the law. Asfaw laughed, prosecutors said, and walked away from the counter. The ticket agent alerted a supervisor, who notified State Police. full story

What is it about Boston that attracts this special brand of idiocy? Sure, maybe the agent's questions were invasive, but I knew when I was 6 not to joke about bombs at an airport. They take these things very seriously. This is not some new post-911 thing, this is the way it's been as long as there has been high traffic commercial airports.

I just have to wonder "What the hell was she thinking?" She was asked by an airport employee about the strange device she was wearing and walked away. What did she expect to happen? People who are already blaming the police for this should put themselves in their shoes: they didn't know what the device or the putty she was carrying was and she refused to answer questions about it. What were they supposed to do? She's lucky be alive after a stunt like that. Use some common sense.

One of the men criminally charged after placing blinking cartoon advertisements around the city and causing a terrorism scare videotaped a police bomb squad removing one of the devices, but did not tell the officers the object was harmless. Surveillance cameras caught 27-year-old Peter Berdovsky videotaping officers removing what they thought was a possible bomb last week. "Mr. Berdovsky didn't do anything inappropriate," his lawyer, Walter Prince, said Tuesday. full article

Well, he's screwed. If you buy his lawyer's claim that he just happened to be innocently taping the incident, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Turner Broadcasting System has accepted full responsibility for the guerrilla marketing campaign that caused a security scare across Boston Wednesday. WBZ-TV's Dan Rea spoke with Mayor Thomas Menino Friday morning and Menino said that the company had agreed to pay about $250,000 for the costs created by the scare. Phil Kent, Turner's C-E-O, issued an apology in full-page ads in Boston newspapers Friday for "the confusion and inconvenience" caused as highways, bridges and river traffic were shut down. Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were released Thursday on $2,500 bail each after pleading not guilty pleas to charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. full article

If this is accurate, it changes my mind about the situation. Turner should not get off with a bribe. I still believe Berdovsky and Stevens deserve to face charges, but many others deserve to face charges as well. If the city of Boston is not going to prosecute the people at Turner and Interference who orchestrated the stunt, the city has no business persecuting the bottom-level guys who did their employer's dirty work.

I would like to note that this does not change my conviction that the police did a fine job. This is on Menino, not the police.

I've been very impressed by how many Boston area liberals have gained a sense of rebellion in recent days by rallying around mega corporation Turner and their corporate lackeys who planted the devices. It's almost surreal that commercial culture has taken such a grip that even rebellion against authority has a corporate edge. None of the myriad of REAL abuses of authority since 9/11 have garnered such a tremendous response. Fail to give a favored marketing firm free reign to do whatever they please in the city, especially if they're advertising an important cartoon network show, and you have a massive outcry.

Berdovsky sent an e-mail to friends at 1:25 p.m. telling them not to talk about the marketing scheme to promote the animated television show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" on the Cartoon Network. "My boss from the Cartoon Network’s ad agency just called -- she is asking that we pretty please keep everything on the DL," or down low, wrote Berdovsky, according to a copy of the e-mail provided to the Globe. ... Moments after facing the felony charges, Berdovsky and Stevens mocked reporters at press conference outside court, deflecting questions about their culpability with non sequiter quips about haircuts in the 1970s. "Hair today, gone tomorrow," said Stevens, Berdovsky added: "I'm quite enjoying this." full article

Because actively suppressing critical security information to further the greed of your corporate masters is fun!

Does anyone else find it odd that Turner-owned CNN continued to hype the suspicious devices story even as Turner executives were aware of the situation and what exactly the devices were? If anyone was intentionally spreading fear it was Turner, not Boston Police Department.

A lot of people seem to think the response to the Mooninite devices was overblown and paranoid. While I certainly agree that a lot of the post-9/11 security in the United States has been based on paranoia, I find it completely reasonable to treat strange unknown electronic devices attached to supports for overhanging highways with a high degree of suspicion.

I've always been under the impression that it is not legal to put up unauthorized electronic billboards on public structures along the highway...