As Greater Boston approaches the first anniversary of the Marathon bombings, what lessons can be gleaned to help municipalities better prepare for crises?
This is the question at the core of a new report we’ve released today. Our goal was to explore what went well in the post-attack emergency response and, perhaps more importantly, to make recommendations in order to help Boston and other cities better prepare for complex emergency events.
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Beyond preventing the Marathon attacks in the first place, our region is far better protected from the threat of disaster and terrorism because of careful planning, training, and repeated experience providing security at large-scale events throughout New England.
Nonetheless, this response system and the culture of action that prevails in law enforcement needs to be better refined so that in fast-moving, complex emergencies like those during the manhunt in the week after the bombings, there is less chance that undisciplined behavior will endanger the public and responders alike.
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On one hand, the actions now commonly referred to as “Boston Strong” revealed the value of the emergency capabilities that our region has painstakingly developed over the past decade and more. Public safety agencies, emergency managers, and emergency medical organizations have systematically collaborated to provide protection at the many scheduled events that the region hosts – not just the Marathon, but major sports championships, First Night, the Fourth of July Esplanade concert and fireworks, and others.
That preparedness paid dividends in the aftermath of the bombing. The effectiveness of the medical response – the presence of highly trained personnel, the speed in evacuating the injured, and the skillful readiness of nearby hospital emergency departments — worked largely by design, not as a matter of good fortune or hasty improvisation.
We found that the law enforcement response was also launched from a platform of contingency planning and past collaboration. At the command level, leaders sought each other out to ensure coordinated actions. Swiftly organized teams searched for more explosives, secured the vast crime scene, collected evidence, sought photos of the scene, and organized transport for thousands of spectators still in the area and some 10,000 runners still on the Marathon course.
A high degree of cooperation, with some exceptions, was also maintained as investigators from many agencies sought to identify and apprehend the bombers.
Although not all agency rivalries and frictions have been stifled, the events in the week that followed the attacks suggest senior commanders have internalized the mindset of strategic and operational coordination. They recognize that in a major disaster or crisis, no organization can do it all.
Still, command at the street level became problematic as the manhunt unfolded, beginning with the murder of Officer Sean Collier at MIT on Thursday evening and concluding less than 24 hours later with the capture of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown.
In the firefight between police and the Tsarnaevs when Officer Richard Donahue was severely wounded, a large number of officers from many police departments — including Donahue himself — arrived at the scene in response to a call for assistance. However, lacking effective organization, they fired hundreds of rounds in a crossfire setting, endangering each other and residents in surrounding homes.
At the site of the boat where Dzhokhar was apprehended on Friday, the first tactical teams to arrive, operating in tandem, seemed to have the situation under control. But they were quickly joined by large numbers of individual officers from many public safety agencies, reportedly eager to participate in the arrest, who were not part of the on-site command structure. A fusillade of gunfire suddenly broke out, again endangering officers loosely arrayed in a crossfire setting and threatening efforts to capture Tsarnaev alive.
These are problems in the street-level organization and supervision of officers when they have become disconnected from the authority structure of their own departments. In part, these problems are created by self-deployment of officers who arrive on the scene as individuals – eager to help their peers and share the action. They should be trained to integrate into a disciplined team under the supervision of an officer from another department. Mid-level supervisors need to be trained to better assert authority in such situations. There is also perhaps a problem of doctrine and training in the use of weapons in a large-scale operation.
We are likely to experience significant crises in the future, be they natural disasters, infrastructure or cyber-system failures, industrial or transportation accidents, epidemics of infectious disease, terrorism. Emergency response agencies will undoubtedly have to work together effectively at both the command level and on the street. We need to continue to develop the capacity of responders to work across the boundaries of their own organizations effectively, collaboratively, and with discipline.