Massachusetts – FBI: Boston Vulnerable to Mumbai Like Terrorist Attack

Massachusetts – Boston is making itself vulnerable to a terrorist attack like the rampage in Mumbai last year by not adequately arming its police with the semiautomatic assault rifles widely available to officers in many of the nation’s other major cities, the top FBI agent in Boston said.

Not only could the police force not easily defend against an attack by well-armed terrorists, but the absence of weapons could actually make the city a target, said Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the local FBI field office.

He said a recently shelved plan to arm as many as 200 neighborhood officers with the weapons “should be revisited sooner rather than later.”

“There’s no imminent threat,” Bamford told the Globe. But, “all things being equal, if a terrorist decides, ‘OK, we’re going to do something like what took place in Mumbai,’ well, where would you go?” Bamford said. “If you have a choice of a metropolitan city, would I go to New York, with 40,000 police officers, would I go to Los Angeles, with 8,000, or would I go to Boston, with 3,500? . . . And I know there’s no assault rifles in the Boston Police Department?”

Bamford said he had discussed the issue of assault rifles with Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, whose original plan met resistance from Mayor Thomas M. Menino and community leaders. But Bamford said he had not been pressured to publicly defend the program.

The Globe first reported in May on the initiative to arm 200 officers with M16 rifles provided free by the US military, based on accounts from law enforcement officials who had been briefed about it and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to discuss it publicly.

Davis said that his original plan only entailed arming 12 to 24 specially trained officers at any one time.
He has since scaled back even that plan, he said, and about two weeks ago deployed a limited number of “gun cars,” specially equipped sport utility vehicles supplied with high-power assault rifles, to patrol the city 24 hours a day. He declined to say how many such vehicles were deployed, but said that previously such cars were on the streets only 16 hours a day.

“The mayor has made it clear, and I agree, that this is not a weapon that an average patrol officer should have in his car or slung over his shoulder,” Davis said.

Community leaders seemed even cooler to the idea yesterday despite Bamford’s warning, saying such weapons could unnecessarily frighten residents.

“I haven’t heard a good argument yet why we need them,” said the Rev. William E. Dickerson II, pastor of Greater Love Tabernacle in Dorchester. “If I saw an officer with that gun, I would think, ‘Man, there must be something going down that we don’t know about for them to be taking it to that level.’ ”

Bamford said the attacks in Mumbai last November and a terrorist plot to attack well-known landmarks in New York City, which was foiled in 1993, had underscored the necessity for police departments to have overwhelming firepower.

In the Mumbai attack, 10 people armed with automatic rifles and grenades attacked a Jewish center, two five-star hotels, a railway station, and a hospital, killing 166 people, wounding 234 others, and paralyzing the city for three days.

Bamford said the tiny group of terrorists was able to wreak havoc because Indian authorities had little firepower.

“These 10 terrorists are walking around with Chinese-made assault rifles, and the Indian Army’s that’s responding several hours later is coming in with World War II vintage, bolt-action rifles,” he said.