Because why would you want them?
If you happen to be an aspiring domestic terrorist, particularly in or around Boston, with a hankering to blow up a marathon or some other large, public event, it’s been a pretty good week for you. First we learned that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death penalty sentence has been revoked. (At least temporarily.) And now we find out that the elite Boston Transit SWAT team that was widely celebrated for bringing Tsarnaev to justice has been unceremoniously disbanded. Officers assigned to the highly-trained unit were told to turn in their special equipment and return to more regular duty. (CBS Boston)
The highly trained Transit SWAT team that was once celebrated for capturing Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been dissolved.
Transit Police spend a lot of time training for anything that could happen. And in 2013, the unimaginable did…
For a unit that was so highly trained and regarded, sources say the team is disappointed that it has been dissolved.
The I-Team reached out to the Transit Police and were told it had no comment on disbanding the unit.
The obvious question here would be… why? The CBS News team who broke this story asked the Boston PD but received no comment. The closest they came was an observation made by some inside sources who said that the tactical team “had not been used on calls much over the last few years.”
I’m not trying to speak out of turn here, but if you haven’t had many violent crimes requiring SWAT intervention on the metro over the past few years, might the reason be that you’ve got a very visible, highly-trained and well equipped SWAT team keeping an eye on things? One might speculate that a lack of mass shootings, bombings or other forms of attack is a sign that the system was working.
