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Federal agents burst into Boston hotel room in the middle of the night, handcuff occupant, interrogate him for 45 minutes, then realize they had the wrong room, wrong guy
By adamg on Wed, 04/05/2023 - 8:55pm
Some FBI and other federal agents are probably grateful for sovereign immunity because, as WBZ reports, they were doing a training exercise around 10 p.m. on Tuesday when they started banging on the door of a 15th-floor room at the Revere Hotel on Stuart Street demanding to be let in and when they were, they handcuffed the airline pilot who had been sleeping in the room, stuffed him in the shower and then interrogated him - until they realized, oops, he really was who he said he was and not part of their exercise.
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Comments
Good to know
That the Revere Hotel allows their grounds to be used by stupid pigs to harass people.
If I stayed in rich people hotels, I'd not stay in theirs.
It's the Police
Do most places of business deny cops entry?
Anyone can deny them entry if they don’t…
…. have a warrant. Not that they will always respect that.
There's a pretty big difference
between "denying entry" and "letting them use the place for training while the business is operating".
(face palm)
Everyone involved in the making of that screw up should get demoted. Time to re-up my ACLU.
Agreed Will
There should be no training for law enforcement.
You are right
Training for law enforcement is crucial how else will they learn how to brutalize people who didn’t do anything wrong?
If the training doesn't include verifying room number/address...
then at the least, they clearly can't be trusted to do it in spaces where the general public is around.
Indeed.
They never train where the public is around, and the first time they do it, this happens. Clearly no more training at all anywhere near the public.
wow
you got this riled up at a relatively mild criticism of law enforcement?
Manage your expectations
For anon trash.
Falling to your lowest level of training
When the shit hits the fan, it doesn't matter how good you think you are, you will revert down to how you've been trained for that situation. That's why training is ESSENTIAL but you have to do it right and be at 100% throughout your training from day one through ongoing continued training exercises.
So if you are going to colossally f-up a training exercise like this, I do not want to imagine how this could have played out if there was a real bad guy trying to cause actual harm to people.
Spending an hour interrogating an innocent person in the wrong room while the terrorist you are trying to catch is getting ready to place a device, or a human trafficker is about to sell a human being to another depraved individual might be all the time they need to accomplish their task. And I don't think it's hyperbolic to raise those as scenarios given the agencies we are told were involved in this failed training operation.
It's evident now that those involved were not prepared to conduct such a training exercise in an uncontrolled environment like this hotel occupied by guests. There IS a reason TO train in such a place, because that will be the real-world environment when it's a real situation, but you better be fully prepared to do so 100% correctly or you need to stick to the strictly controlled settings for your training right now.
Frankly, this could have been even worse than it was. You have the legal right to defend yourself against UNLAWFUL detention, which this clearly was. Thankfully we haven't seen any reports of physical injuries resulting from this.
Hey at least they didn’t
Hey at least they didn’t shoot anyone’s dog this time
Good training for non-cops
Don't open your locked hotel door for cops. That's why the lock is there.
This is good, real-world
This is good, real-world training for when they need to make stupid, avoidable mistakes in the field.
I don't believe this story for a second
The FBI is not conducting a "training exercise" at 3:45am in a random Revere hotel.
Not buying it.
"The" Revere Hotel
Theatre District, friend.
I think you mean the Howard Johnson's
Or the grounds of the Coconut Grove nightclub, if you prefer.
There was a HoJo there?
Jesus, what decade was that?
The 57 Park Plaza Hotel was Howard Johnson property...
...when they tried to expand into more upscale locations, in the '70s, '80s, maybe into the '90s. Also housed the huge, swanky Sack 57 movie theater, which hosted many prestige premieres, including "Apocalypse Now" and the first "Star Trek" movie.
I was there for all four World Series wins
And there are still times when I think that the cool Boston was three decades before I arrived.
Thank you for the hotel clarification
Still not buying this story.
And what the hell is with that "interrogation"?
Why would you drag someone into the shower to interrogate them? Were they going to waterboard him? What kind of police procedural TV show bullshit is this?
Very suspicious.
You put them in the shower
You put them in the shower and tell them it’s time to come clean. That’s, like, law enforcement 101.
more confusing
That makes no sense.
Appropriate Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y09mhZlgU04
Where the hell was the
Where the hell was the training proctor who should have stopped the exercise?
I mean... It's just barely believable that (in the interest of time/completeness), a proctor with a checklist might let them continue after a fundamental disqualifying error to see what else they screw up - but NOT when that checklist should also pre-screen the room for nonparticipants.
Yeah, this is the part that bothers me
You don't just "go do training". There's someone leading you through it. That's why it's "training" and not "jobbing". There should have been someone either teaching or guiding or judging or in some way keeping the *simulation* on the rails and not letting you go off on your own and do stupid things...like breaching the wrong room...and then interrogating a civilian...and then still holding him for FORTY FIVE MINUTES...etc. Like what if they had busted in and one of the "trainees" lost control of his temper and started really fucking up the "role player". Like, who calls timeout and reins him in if there's no trainer? Or was this some sort of "training" where you just do whatever you want and call it a day?
Why do I have a feeling this pilot was "suspected" of being a terrorist or something on some sort of bullshit false pretense and after beating him up for nearly an hour, they realized their intel or some other nonsense was wrong and now they're backpedaling to try to avoid looking like even worse clowns than they already do.
Why do I have a feeling this
Why do I have a feeling this pilot was ...
Yeah. There's been an uptick in swatting lately, too (though this would be a few levels above mere 'regular' swatting).
Does seem very fishy.
Especially if the military was involved. Be interesting to know what airline the pilot works for.
Delta
.
I blame the pilot
last night he didn't stay in a Holiday Inn Express.
Well they failed step one of
Well they failed step one of the training, make sure you have the right room.
I do not understand why you would do something like this in an operational hotel. There must be several hotels at any given time in a state of repair that does not allow for occupancy but could be used for training.
I question the competence of all these agencies and the hotel itself. I realize this was government which limits liability but The Revere Hotel parent company, Pebblebrook, should give this guy an outrageous amount of free hotel stays anywhere in their portfolio he wants to go to for allowing themselves to be used in these trainings without taking the safety of guests into account.
ps - was this really a training exercise?
Seems highly irregular.
Before midnight, not 3:45 a.m.
According to the WBZ article, the FBI report says "At approximately 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, the FBI Boston Division was assisting the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting a Department of Defense (DOD) training exercise at a hotel in Boston to simulate a situation their personnel might encounter in a deployed environment." The quotes the police report as saying "Investigators were called to the scene at 12:20 a.m. Wednesday."
I wonder what Paul Revere ….
…. would say and do about this?
Probably storm in during the
Probably storm in during the middle of the night, yelling that the British are coming, and then realize he’s in the wrong town.
Let me guess...
Let me guess, we're going to see felony kidnapping charges against the cops who held a random stranger against his will for an hour, approximately...... never?
That sovereign immunity, it's
That sovereign immunity, it's a hell of a drug.
Because...
...qualified immunity.
If we never end it, we should expect atrocities to continue forever.