Incident Response to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings

Introduction

Although named for its venue, the Boston Marathon is sponsored by a number of different cities in the greater Boston area and is held annually on Patriot's Day, which falls on the third Monday in April (About the Boston Marathon, 2018). First run as an all-male event in 1897, the Boston Marathon has since become an international event that draws both male and female contestants from around the world and commands a global audience. On April 15, 2013, two Kyrgyz-American brothers detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line, causing hundreds of casualties — many of them severe and involving the loss of limbs — as well as three fatalities. The purpose of this case study is to provide an analysis of the effectiveness of the incident response to these bombings, including the role of first responders and the law enforcement community. Following the case study analysis, a summary of the research and key findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis of the Bombings

The 199th running of the Boston Marathon proceeded without incident until approximately 2:49 p.m., when the first of two homemade bombs — constructed from pressure cookers and filled with shrapnel and nails — was detonated near the finish line. The second bomb exploded just 13 seconds later, and the devastation caused by both devices was severe. As Lonky (2017) reports, "There were people on the ground, limbs scattered, blood everywhere. Three spectators lie dead, and nearly two hundred sixty people are strewn, injured" (p. 393). A number of first responders and civilian spectators immediately came to the assistance of the injured, including firefighter James Plourde, whose iconic photograph was circulated worldwide in the aftermath of the bombings (Bowerman, 2016).

Following a massive manhunt, law enforcement authorities succeeded in apprehending the first of the two bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Boston Marathon bombing, 2018). His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had been run over by his younger brother during an escape attempt and was subsequently killed during an armed confrontation with law enforcement (Boston Marathon bombing, 2018). The investigations that followed drew on the resources of more than 1,000 local, state, and federal law enforcement officials (Boston Marathon bombing, 2018). The results of this intensive investigation determined that the two brothers were solely responsible for the bombings and were not associated with any domestic or international terrorist organization (Boston Marathon bombing, 2018).

Law Enforcement Response and the Manhunt

The rapid and successful outcome of the investigation was the result of the professionalism and diligence of the thousand-plus law enforcement authorities assigned to the incident. In the immediate aftermath of the bombings, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mobilized the organization's full resources (Frommer, 2013). Just two days later, FBI analysts examining thousands of photographs and video recordings taken by security cameras and bystanders succeeded in identifying the two primary suspects. Surveillance-camera images of the pair were released to the public on the evening of April 18, 2013 (Frommer, 2013).

That same evening, a 27-year-old police officer working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was murdered by the two Tsarnaev brothers as he sat in his patrol car, apparently in an attempt to obtain his service revolver (Frommer, 2013). Shortly thereafter, the older brother stole a Mercedes SUV and took the driver hostage, telling him he was one of the two Boston Marathon bombers. The younger brother followed in a Honda Civic, and the pair drove to several ATM machines, forcing the hostage to withdraw money for them (Frommer, 2013).

A critical breakthrough occurred when the hostage managed to escape during one of these stops and contacted local police, informing them that his cellphone — still in the SUV — could be used to track the vehicle (Frommer, 2013). Early in the morning of April 19, the two suspect vehicles were spotted by law enforcement authorities in Watertown, a suburb of Boston, where officers attempted to apprehend the pair. During the ensuing gun battle, one officer was critically wounded but survived. The younger brother then commandeered the SUV and attempted to crash it into the police officers, but instead ran over his older brother, severely wounding him (Frommer, 2013). The younger brother subsequently fled on foot, while the older brother — who had also sustained multiple gunshot wounds — was taken to a local hospital, where he died (Frommer, 2013).

The effectiveness of the law enforcement response is reflected in the speed with which suspects were identified and located, as well as the decisive steps taken by the FBI. As Frommer (2013) notes, on April 19 "the Boston area was put on lockdown, with schools closed, public transportation service suspended and people advised to stay inside their homes, as police conducted door-to-door searches in Watertown and military-style vehicles patrolled the streets" (para. 4). The younger brother, who had been wounded during the earlier gunfights, was apprehended when a Watertown resident noticed a trail of blood leading to a boat in his backyard and called 911 (Frommer, 2013). Following a brief standoff, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody at approximately 8:00 p.m. on April 19, though he was too injured at the time to speak with investigators (Lonky, 2017). A handwritten note recovered from the boat indicated that the bombings were carried out in retaliation for American military operations in Muslim-majority countries (Lonky, 2017).

At trial, the younger Tsarnaev brother was found guilty of all 30 charges filed against him, and the jury imposed the death penalty for six of the 17 capital charges (Lonky, 2017). He is currently confined at the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado — popularly known as "the Alcatraz of the Rockies" — under the most extreme solitary confinement procedures, termed "Special Administrative Measures," while his automatic appeals are processed by the courts (Henry, 2018).

Conclusion

The research showed that on April 15, 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev used two homemade bombs in a domestic terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon, resulting in three deaths and more than 260 casualties, many of them severe. The research also demonstrated that local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities mobilized all available resources during the ensuing manhunt, resulting in the successful apprehension of the surviving suspect and the imposition of a death penalty verdict. Finally, the evidence consistently showed that civic leaders in Boston and neighboring cities had taken careful steps to ensure that first responders and trauma infrastructure were pre-positioned to respond to natural or man-made disasters, and these preparations helped to minimize the human toll of the attack.

References

About the Boston Marathon. (2018). Boston Marathon. Retrieved from https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon.

Boston Marathon bombing. (2018). History. Retrieved from

Bowerman, M. (2015, April 14). Boston Marathon bombing survivors and first responders. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/04/14/boston-marathon-bombing-survivors-and-first-responders-where-they-now/83026086/.

Frommer, F. J. (2013, June 15). Justice Department directing full resources to investigate Boston Marathon bombings. Huffington Post. Retrieved from

Gates, J. D., & Arabian, S. (2017, July 27). The initial response to the Boston Marathon bombing. Annals of Surgery, 260(6), 960–966.

Henry, J. (2018, April 17). Who What Why. Retrieved from https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/04/17/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-still-gagged-as-death-penalty-appeal-grinds-on/.

Lonky, H. (2017, Summer). Revisiting the public safety exception to Miranda for suspected terrorists: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 107(3), 393–399.