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Arsenal Street, specifically the section located between two malls in Watertown, is the epicenter of Friday morning's news. Police have clustered here as they hunt for the remaining suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the year-old wanted for Monday's Marathon bombings. Aresnal Street, and the two malls that bookend the enormous police presence, are on the border between Watertown and the Boston suburb of Brighton.
Brighton is home to young adults, college students and Irish and Russian families who have been there for generations. From to , I lived on Hobson Street in Brighton. It was a short Charles River bike ride away from the scene of this manhunt.
There's no violent crime in these neighborhoods: When I lived here someone unwittingly showed up drunk at my apartment door mistaking my home for his and a misunderstanding ensued. That's the only confrontation I remember. It was through Watertown's quiet, small, one-way streets in the east end of town that police had a gun battle in the middle of the night. Today not just Brighton and Watertown, but the neighboring communities of Belmont, Cambridge and all of Boston are on government-mandated lockdown; Watertown is a law enforcement stronghold.
Not the outdoor celebration of spring it was supposed to be. Sue Gryszkiewicz, 29, lives on Clark Street in Somerville, two blocks from Norfolk Street, within shouting distance of the police activity early Friday. They instructed the residents of one house, through a megaphone, to evacuate and come out with their hands up. My neighbors came out of the house with their hands up. They were asked to turn around with their hands up. And then they were placed in handcuffs--those plastic handcuffs used mostly during crowd-control events.
This happened in three consecutive houses across the street from me--the military and the police and the SWAT teams would surround the house, aiming high-powered rifles at it. They would put an armored vehicle right in front of the house, with a sniper on top, pointing right toward the second-floor window.
And then, through a megaphone, people were told to come out of the house. Some of those who were arrested were told to sit on my lawn, and they were interrogated for approximately two hours. I have no idea if they were read their Miranda rights. I have no idea if they were ever told they were under arrest. But they were certainly under arrest, and they were being interrogated.
I took pictures of these events as they went on. Finally, around 6 p. It was a relief because by that time, the military vehicles and SWAT teams had already gone, and we were out in the streets. Some of us were talking to our neighbors, some of us were trying to find out what happened to those who were under arrest. Then we heard shots being fired in the distance.
We learned later that this was when the second suspect was found hiding in a boat, about a quarter-mile from where I live. What's interesting, after all is said and done, is that a year later, we found out it wasn't the lockdown that caught the suspect. Quite the opposite--it was when the lockdown was lifted that a neighbor found some blood on his property and called We have a good police department in Watertown. I'm sure that if left to their own normal chain of command and operations, they would have found this individual as a suspect.
We didn't need this overwhelmingly militarized state of siege. I work for the American Friends Service Committee. I mostly do immigrant rights work in the U.
I've been to war zones in Colombia and in Palestine. I know what occupation looks like. I know what a state of siege and a coup looks like. I've been to Ecuador a week after the attempted coup against [President Rafael] Correa [in ].
So I know what these things look like. When I saw what was happening in my neighborhood, I really thought it was martial law. What I'd like to know is: First, why are our police becoming increasingly militarized?
Second, how did they get this military hardware? Third, by what constitutional authority were we placed under house arrest for 18 hours? I think everybody should be alarmed that this was a trial run for martial law. That's exactly what I told my wife as these events transpired before our eyes--that this is a practice for martial law. This didn't just come out of the blue. Basically, right now it just feels like a war zone … Black Hawk helicopters flying around, and the streets are just empty.
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