Boston Bomber Shootout

Information is finally starting to come out about the night the Boston Police Department had the shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers. If you followed some bloggers that witnessed the incident, you know that several rounds entered houses and could have injured civilians. NBC has a story about the shootout and it is worth reading.

Boston Police Rule 303A gives the actions to be followed after the use of lethal force. Section 11 covers the requirements for a Firearm Discharge Investigation Team. As far as I can tell, if a report was made, no information about it has been made public.

If you google the streets where the shootout happened, you can see that the brothers route of escape was limited and it should have been a simple matter to contain them. Instead, there was a mad minute with hundreds of rounds being fired. Most of the injuries to police were from friendly fire. I think the lesson here is that if you should find yourself in the vicinity of similar action, get cover and stay down and when you do break cover, do it carefully.

As a final comment, as someone who went to college in Boston during the Vietnam Era and saw several student riots, I can tell you that you did not mess with the Boston Tactical Police Force.