Posted on 04/19/2011 7:43:23 PM PDT by grundle
BURLINGTON -- Police responded in force today to a report of a man with a rifle at a mall, evacuating shoppers and calling in a SWAT team as worried workers locked themselves into stores. But it turned out that the man was only carrying an umbrella.
Police said the umbrella, which had a samurai sword-style handle, did look like a rifle, and they didn't fault those at the Burlington Mall who had reported the man.
“It was interpreted to be a gun by five different people,” said Burlington Police Chief Michael Kent. “We are always telling people to be vigilant. This is what we want.”
Police raced to the mall, blocking off the parking lot as four helicopters hovered in the sky. The North East Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council SWAT team, composed of officers from area communities, was summoned.
Tigges said that once police were inside the building, they were alerted that there was surveillance video of the suspect leaving the Sears store at the mall. Police showed the video to two people who had spotted the man at the Nordstrom store. They confirmed it was the same person, and police were able to determine the object the man was carrying was an umbrella and not a rifle.
State Police also said in a statement that a man had called them to report that he was the person seen in the mall. Troopers and officers went to the area of the nearby Lahey Clinic hospital, where the man worked, and interviewed him, determining he was not a threat.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Is that an umbrella in your pocket, or are you just happy it’s going to rain?
We have Mexican drug gangs roaming our cities and killing people, when will we see the SWAT teams come down on them? Hmmmm....
Add irresponsible clueless morons to the list of hazards at your local mall!
Lucky no one was “accidentally” shot by the cops.
The pictured umbrella does indeed have a “Samurai Sword” appearing handle, but how anyone can see a rifle there is beyond me.
I work up the street from this place...must be something in the water!
Just crazy.
Massho... Massachussetts residents don’t even know what a gun looks like.
And here is your proof. I heard this this morning, and couldn’t believe it. Does this mean that NO ONE carries a gun at all in Massachussetts?
Looks like a sword, not a rifle.
Would it even be illegal to carry a rifle around slung over your shoulder?
Jeez. Someone from Connecticut making derogatory comments about Massachusetts liberals? Talk about the kettle...
Stupid liberals can’t tell the difference between a gun and an umbrella!
I thought our military services recruited from all states?
Does no one return once they are discharged from our armed forces?
The cops are utterly untrained?
The mall cops must be so proud of their lack of object identification skills!
Who’s going top pay for this debacle, sounds pretty expensive to put such a large force into action on such poor intelligence.
Fat Teddy’s personal body-guard got caught with an illegal machine-gun several years ago, so some residents there at least used to handle firearms.
And of course the ‘roided out SWAT-drones went into a frenzy. One of these days those fools are going to take out a number of innocents during a response. They have so much adrenaline flowing it is actually remarkable that they don’t kill more people more often than they already do. Scariest thing I ever saw was a SWAT response at our mall. I knew, and know, a good number of officers on both the city force and deputies in the sheriff’s department. When I saw some of those guys with fully automatic weapons stomping about playing soldier-boy it shook me to the core. Bad enough they have sidearms on duty every day, but to arm them like that...nobody would be safe. Can you say ‘spray and pray’?
I agree. When I see how close my state is to my surrounding states (In terms of losing their damned minds) It’s important for me to hold onto the little things.
It’s still a touch easier to get a CCW in my state than those that surround my state. For now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAFRicTdf-M
Good thing it was a umbrella and not a golf club. s/
I know a lot of folks blame the liberalization of places like Vermont and NH on Massachusetts, but I don’t think they can blame Vermont on MA. All those people up there that turned a solid red state into a liberal state are the result of hippies from everywhere that went up there in the sixties or seventies.
NH...well...maybe.
My bet would be if a Burlington cop, or even Paul Blart, had seen the guy, he would have realized it was only an umbrella and not given the guy a second look. And it's quite likely the guy was directly observed by Burlington police and / or mall guards. Whenever I go there, I generally encounter both while walking through the halls.
The way these things seem to get started is, a hare-brained citizen jumps to a conclusion and makes a breathless report. Then the police have to assume the worst until proven otherwise.
A few years ago we witnessed this phenomenon when a 19-year old MIT student named Star Simpson went to Logan Airport to pick up her arriving boyfriend. She was wearing a nerdy piece of artwork
that had green LEDs in the shape of a star driven by a small circuit board powered by a nine-volt battery. The illegal immigrant whom she approached with a question at a counter in Terminal C called the cops and reported a person with a suicide bomb under her sweatshirt. Predictably, the result was chaos.
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