Politics

Boston Marathon Finish Line Was Swept For Bombs Before Attack

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The first responders who ran towards the scene of the terrorist attack yesterday at Boston should rightly be praised for their heroism. Even so, we have to ask the question whether the authorities did everything they could have to detect the heinous plan and avoid the horror.

One element of this is the bomb sweeping done before the event:

University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach, who was near the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a series of explosions went off, said he thought it was odd there were bomb sniffing dogs at the start and finish lines.

“They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it’s just a training exercise,” Coach Ali Stevenson told Local 15.

Stevenson said he saw law enforcement spotters on the roofs at the start of the race. He’s been in plenty of marathons in Chicago, D.C., Chicago, London and other major metropolitan areas but has never seen that level of security before.

I had noticed this tweet that was sent hours before the bombings, from a reporter in Boston:

After the attack, another twitter user mentioned these bomb sweeps:

If the reports are true that the bombs were in backpacks, this would have escaped a sweep hours earlier.