some extent, when you try to provide everyone immediate communication, it can lead to a slowdown in the communication process because so many people are trying to communicate. Unfortunately, that may have happened during the Boston bombing incident. Having immediate communication is a great thing until you overload the system or fail to have a designate point of contact,” Rathburn surmised. “In my opinion it was not the fact the backpacks were allowed into the Marathon venue that caused the bombing. It was a failure to assess credible information that potential threats were imminent.”
Despite all the planning and cooperative partnerships among agencies in the Boston area, even Michelman admitted the process could have been refined when it came to intelligence and communications in previous year. She said everyone learned a painful lesson.
“From the perspective of public-private partnerships and synergies, we in Boston have been in a very different place compared to other cities around the country. We have worked very hard in making relationships between public, private and government agencies -- and the intelligence gathering process -- better. We learned a lot from the Democratic National Convention several years ago, when we set up a Multi-Agency Command Center (the MAC) that had representatives from every public agency, and also from large private organizations like mine,” said Michelman.
“There has been a lot of talk resulting from last year’s horrific event surrounding command and control and unity of command. There is no secret that law enforcement said there was no one person in charge. And maybe that’s okay in some events because there just couldn’t be, but that didn’t lessen the scrutiny around that issue. We have all worked diligently to rectify any shortcomings in that area,” she concluded.
Secured Cities Note:
Both Chuck Brooks and Bonnie Michaelman will be featured speakers at the 2014 Secured Cities Conference in Baltimore, November 4-6. For more information on the program and how to register, please go to www.securedcities..com.