To Shelter in Place

In many European towns such as Ronda, Toledo, or York one can stand on massive stone walls, look out, and think about why rulers worried about invasion.  Yet, as we learned in the past few weeks, the walls served a second purpose: keeping people you did not want to escape inside.  Doing that for a sprawling city like Boston, full of roadways, public transit, and Logan Airport, is not nearly as easy as throwing down the gate and pulling up the drawbridge.

Now that the authorities have subdued the Boston bombing brothers, we have seen a wave of second-guessing about the decision to issue a “shelter-in-place” order, which shut down Boston for a day.  Some estimates show that a day of Boston economic activity adds $330 million to the economy.  Shutting the city down for the day cost many people and businesses a lot of money. To this I say: hindsight is easy.  Making the call on the fly is hard.  I ask people publicly voicing doubts: what would you have done if you were Thomas Menino or Deval Patrick? There were whole groups of people sitting around and debating this on CNN for a couple of days.  What would you have done if you thought there was a 20% chance of another attack?  A 10% chance?  The bombers were still at-large, and no one knew who they were or whether they acted as part of a network.  What call would you have made?  Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino made the call they could with the information they had.

Thomas Menino has been mayor of Boston for 20 years.  Say what you will about him, he loves that city.  No one would put up with what the mayor of Boston has to put up with if they did not love it.

We elect leaders because we trust their judgment.  People vote with their gut as much as their head.  Everyone knows election issues come and go.  No one made the decision to shut down Boston lightly.  The Boston PD did an amazing job finding the culprits.  The leaders of Boston did a good job in giving them the resources to do so; they erred on the side of caution and safety.  They should be commended, not reprimanded, for that.