This story is being talked a lot about around the water cooler.
Police received a call from inside the mall saying that a man was seen shortly after 10 a.m. with a rifle inside the Nordstrom’s department store at the Burlington Mall.
The “gun” was believed to be attached to the man’s backpack.
State and local police searched the mall and evacuated customers and store workers.
Police also set up a perimeter around the mall, an upscale shopping center north of Boston with more than 185 stores.
The man in question, who heard the news of what was happening, called State Police from Lahey Clinic where he reportedly is an employee. The man told police he thought he was the person that was seen in the mall.
After interviewing the man and reviewing security tapes, police determined the man was in fact not carrying a gun, but an umbrella.
Just to solidify how stupid this is read this follow-up.
He was carrying an umbrella with a sleeve that looked like a Samurai sword. It was not a rifle.
It didn’t take me long running security for an Anime Convention that I realized people would report the stupidest things, and overall I’m not going to move on ANYTHING until I have eyes on the problem, or I 100% trust the person reporting to me. I also ask that my staff report serious things directly to me so I can weed out the stupid calls.
If you didn’t, go check out the slide show of the first story. You have a major mall being evacuated and a perimeter set, and full-on-ninjafied SWAT teams in specialized response vehicles…for a man with an umbrella on a rainy day.
An umbrella that looked a little like a samurai sword.
…and with all of this the guy went back to work, and had no idea anything was wrong until he saw the bullshit on the news.
Nice Perimeters Super SWAT!
What’s worse it this call will likely be used to justify next years SWAT budget.
You guys are all idiots. That is all!
Whoa whoa whoa! Let’s not jump to conclusions here! As a matter of fact, umbrellas have been used as guns before. During the cold war ricin pellets were placed in darts and loaded into a specially modified umbrella gun to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident.
Those SWAT teams could have saved someone’s life today… maybe yours!
Read here
I left one of these up so people can click the link. I don’t moderate comments here so if you see your comment vanish just sit tight the spam-trap probably flagged it. I’ll dig it out when I swing by the blog next.
Sorry, actually I thought I’d entered the link html wrong and it was automagically bounced for an error.
No worries. In the end I can just delete the duplicates after informing Hal2000 that yes Alcade is our friend and it is in our best interest to open the pod bay doors…. 😀
Good grief, another one?
(Umbrella != gun), people!
So stupid!
Whoa whoa whoa! Let’s not jump to conclusions here! As a matter of fact, umbrellas have been used as guns before. During the cold war ricin pellets were placed in darts and loaded into a specially modified umbrella gun to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident.
Those SWAT teams could have saved someone’s life today… maybe yours!
Look it up!
Actually they have one of those in the CIA Spy Museum in DC, really great museum.
Thanks for the LOL!
Who was that dude who got shot by the London police in the Underground, because they thought he was a suicide bomber? He wasn’t a bomber, he just had a raincoat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
Wow, I haven’t read about this case since it was news. Sounds like it went a LOT dirtier than originally claimed by the press (I’m not surprised)
The original story was the cops identified themselves and told him to stop, and he ran and was subsequently shot. That’s clean in my book.
It appears that the cops might not have ever identified themselves and were plainclothes. That’s a little more Ruby-ridge…..
Just another example of MA idiocy…
For some reason I can’t embed images, so here’s the link:
01-31-07: Never Forget
Hey but at least the cops FOUND the viral marketing boards!
I’ll give them credit for that!
This is more THIS Stupidity
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/28/boston_police_blow_u.html
Boston Police bomb squad blew up a “Suspicious Package” which happened to be a traffic counter that belongs to the city of Boston.
Looks like someone needs to revisit this guide to add umbrellas: http://blog.robballen.com/2009/09/08/p3717-because-im-nothing-if-not-helpful.post
Indeed they do! You see that? That d00d was totally packing an AK-47!
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