Boston Marathon Bombing Research Paper

The Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013 was an event in American history that showed us as a nation that we are susceptible to the acts of others. We are all not promised tomorrow and that any moment your life can change forever. The act of terrorism is defined as the calculated use of violence or threat of violence against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear. On the day of April 15th, 2013 Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev made the horror that most Americans had feared since the attacks on 9/11, a terrorist attack on our own soil. Another alarming revelation was that these brothers where homegrown …show more content…
The issue being the sharing of critical information when multiple agencies are involved, as proven in Boston Police commissioner, Edward F. Davis’ press conference in which he criticized the Justice Department and the FBI on information sharing. Commissioner Davis played a big role in being a voice for the city of Boston and wanting to improve safety while also getting answers to why this was not prevented. Police commissioner Davis complained to a Senate that the Justice Department did not share information on terrorism threats with local officials before the Boston Marathon bombing. A House committee chairman also condemned the FBI for declining to appear at a House hearing on the same subject of information sharing. "There is a gap with information sharing at a higher level while there are still opportunities to intervene in the planning of these terrorist events," Police Commissioner Davis told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In my opinion as well as Commissioner Davis, information sharing should be made a mission statement requirement and top priority for the local Justice Department’s task forces on terrorism organized by the FBI. As seems to be the case with most interagency investigations and collaborations, information about threats known by one agency sometimes doesn't make it to another agency. This is a result of many factors that include security clearance, trust and authority. The sharing of information could have possibly stopped this terrorist act from happening in the form of information that could have been shared about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month trip to Chechnya earlier that year. The Boston Police department was unaware of information the Justice Department had pertaining to that trip, in my opinion the local police should know