THOUGHTS ON THE BOSTON LOCKDOWN:

My problem is this:

Thousands of police searched for hours to find the fugitive, and failed, even though he was hiding within their primary search area.

When the order was lifted, hundreds of thousands of citizens went out to check things that were important to them, and ten minutes later, the fugitive was found.

Doesn’t that suggest that shutting down the city was the wrong tactic?

A pack, not a herd.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I’m a Tennessee expat who’s been living in Boston for years. (I’m a Maryville High School alum, actually.)

As a long time resident of Boston, I think there is a misperception about the lockdown on Friday. It is not at all unusual here for the governor or mayor to request that everyone stay indoors and no one enter the city of Boston: it happens once or twice a year every winter whenever there’s a big snowstorm. People gladly comply because no one wants to get in the way of the snowplows or imped an emergency vehicle. The requests usually last 6-12 hours until the storm passes, at which point the plows have mostly cleared the roads and people can go about their business again. On Friday, what was unusual and unnerving to us in Boston was not the request to stay indoors, but the fact that the threat was bombs and bullets rather than a blizzard!

And I believe that was a big part of the motivation for the lockdown. Boston is normally crowded with pedestrians. Officials were not only concerned with finding the suspect but with the violence that would likely occur afterwards. So, they warned people to shutter the windows, so to speak, and get ready for a storm. And if there’s one thing Bostonians know it’s how to survive a storm.

Thanks so much for the blog and for all that you do! If you share this with your readers please redact my name for the sake of my privacy.

Interesting.