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48 New Eng. L. Rev. On Remand 1 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/remand48 and id is 1 raw text is: A Different Perspective on the Boston Lockdown ALEXANDER J. BLENKINSOPP* INTRODUCTION The Watertown, Massachusetts, standoff in April 2013, which led to the arrest of one alleged Boston Marathon bomber and the death of the other, is still fresh in the nation's collective mind. The suspects' confrontation with law enforcement personnel and the subsequent manhunt resulted in the lockdown of a large part of the Boston metropolitan area.1 Commentators, legal and otherwise, have been quick to worry that just a couple of suspected terrorists were capable of creating so much trepidation that they brought a major city to a standstill. These commentators express concern about the troubling legal implications of the government's response, the huge economic costs of the shutdown, and the public policy precedents for dealing with terrorism in the future. I believe these commentators have viewed the lockdown incorrectly. Government officials' reason for locking down Boston and the surrounding area was not the dangerousness of the situation. Rather, officials were very close to capturing the remaining suspect, and shutting down the city greatly improved the chances of doing so. Commentators' fears about the ramifications of the lockdown are unjustified when one considers the actual facts of the situation. We need a different lens for analyzing these events, one that rightly casts the government's actions in a more positive light and might even send a stronger message to would-be terrorists. M.P.P. and M.B.A. Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School; A.B., Harvard College; M.Sc., University of Oxford. Thanks to Kyra Wilson Cook, Alex Potapov, and Ina Subulica for their helpful comments. 1 See Mark Clayton, Marathon Bombing: Manhunt has Boston Under Lockdozon. How Long Can it Last?, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR (Apr. 19, 2013), http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/0419/Marathon-bombing-Manhunt-has-Boston-under- lockdown.-How-long-can-it-last (identifying the Boston-area neighborhoods that were asked to shelter-in-place). 1