Adult Swim Guerilla Marketing Causes Bomb Scare in Boston

[enochs_fable]

This is so absolutely bizarre that I'm not sure what to say:

So two guys planted a bunch of light-boards on bridges, near hospitals and T-stations three weeks ago and they were discovered yesterday, causing a bomb scare.

[the city] learned the devices were Turner's when the company sent a fax to City Hall at 5 p.m

Comments

[jay_jay]

They were there for three weeks before anybody noticed.

Actually the woman who reported it to the police said she'd noticd them a couple weeks before, just hadn't gotten around to reporting it. So really, I assume, many other people noticed them, probably even beat and patrol cops, but this woman reporting it as suspicious caused people to ahve to respond differently and blew the whole thing completely out of proportion.

woman

[enochs_fable]

What article was this in?

Yeah, unfortunately, once something is reported as "suspicious," the police can't afford not to respond as if it were a potential threat.

Re: woman

[jay_jay]

Well, I'm pretty sure I read it on CNN last night, but the article up there now isn't the same one I read yesterday. (Yesterday it was about one guy being in custody, today it's about 2 in court...)

[grapefruiteater]

The Globe says they weren't lit up when they were discovered yesterday, but once someone moved one of the things into a dark room, they figured out pretty quickly what it was. So strange.

[jiggliusceasar]

The city should sell them on eBay to recoup the costs. I can't provide a link (auction sites are blocked on this computer), but last I heard, one was selling for thousands of dollars.

eBay

[enochs_fable]

That would be awesome.

[fshk]

Maybe the funniest part of this story is that there's a lot of "ha, we didn't get fooled" gloating in New York. Well, that's funny to me, anyway. But, yeah, nothing about the whole situation indicates intelligence on the part of anyone. The Boston PD is dumb for not noticing sooner and subesquently overreacting. Turner is dumb for putting things that might be considered suspicious out in public in major cities without really telling anyone about it.

teh dumb

[enochs_fable]

So how should have the police reacted? I'm not sure they could have reacted any other way - they have no way of knowing that they weren't potentially dangerous, particularly given the locations.

I'm curious, since articles indicated they were removed without incident in other cities; what was different? Was it the way they were reported, or the way the police responded? I'd love to see an article that provided more details.

Re: teh dumb

[fshk]

I wonder if it was just the way it was reported to the police, or if police departments in other cities knew about them in advance, or if New Yorkers are utterly ignoring the "If You See Something, Say Something" ad campaign, or if Boston residents are more paranoid or what. Now that I've seen photos, the things look pretty inoccuous. And they'd been there for 3 weeks!

I guess you never know what will cause a crisis. I started working at my current company about 10 months after 9/11, when New York was still kind of on edge. After I'd been here maybe a month, the police were called to my floor to investigate a suspicious package. Everyone freaked out and the floor was almost evacuated. Turns out the magnetic key card lock was busted and someone from building maintenance had left the replacement part in its box by the door and then went to do something else. We all knew the lock was busted, someone must have known a repair guy was coming, and yet everyone totally thought the box was going to explode. Such strange times we live in.