Boston Police Commissioner: Communication Between States and Fed. Gov’t Hasn’t Improved Since 9/11

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says ten years after the September 11th attacks, he is still in disbelief that the country was terrorized in such a brutal way.

“Our country had become a war zone”.

Davis was Chief of the Lowell Police Department at the time, and was scheduled to fly back to Boston from a business trip in Philadelphia. He says when he heard of the tragedy he raced back to Lowell.  All flights across the country were cancelled so he drove.

“It was a strange night. The roads were empty. And I realized on the way home that the world has changed forever”.

Davis was appointed Boston Police Commissioner in 2006. He says the city has made significant strides in safety since 2001 but he still has some concerns. Information sharing and communication between city, state and federal officials was a key problem on September 11^th. Has that been resolved?

“No, the problem of communication has not been improved! You’d think 10 years later we would have solved this!?”.

He says however, one big improvement was creating the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC),

which gives police officers access to daily federal information that can be used to prevent a terrorist attack and track criminals. Davis says today local officers are seated at the same table as Federal officials. Ten years ago, he says, they had no voice, nor clearance to be part of the conversation on critical issues related to safety.

That is part of the reason Davis got a confidential memo from the Federal government Thursday afternoon that contained ‘credible but unconfirmed’ information that terrorists were planning an attack with a truck bomb in Washington D.C. or New York City on Sunday. Boston was not mentioned but remains a concern because the two of the three planes involved in the attacks of 2001 left Logan International Airport.

The Boston Police department is working with transit police to increase visibility in all parts of the city. But Davis says his biggest concern is not the highly coordinated attacks of September 11th but the ‘lone wolf’, as he puts it, that will carry out an attack on his own.  He says everyone needs to work together, including the citizens to foil one person’s plans.  He says people need to be cognizant, or as officials have been saying for days, ‘vigilant’ about their surroundings.  Davis says everyone needs to keep his or her eyes open at all times. Especially notice anyone acting suspiciously in a public or crowded place like a mall, public transportation, or parks.  If citizens see anything suspicious, “call police, don’t be afraid to call 911.”

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Posted by eszter vajda on Sep 11 2011. Filed under Featured - For home page featured article, General, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry