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Originally Posted by CNN.COM Judge Paul K. Leary told Grossman that, according to law, the suspects must intend to create a panic to be charged with placing hoax devices.
It appears the suspects had no such intent, the judge said, but the question should be discussed in a later hearing.
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Turner said the devices have been in place for two or three weeks in Boston; New York City; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, California; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
However, only in Boston did the light boards create such a furor. In Seattle and several suburbs, the signs were removed without fuss, according to The Associated Press.
"We haven't had any calls to 911 regarding this," Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb told AP on Wednesday.
Police in Philadelphia told AP that authorities had confiscated 56 of the devices. In New York, a street was shut down for 45 minutes after two of the devices were found on an overpass, the New York Post reported. In all, 41 of the devices were found in the city, according to the newspaper.
In Portland, police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said officers had no plans to remove any of the signs, so long as they weren't on municipal property. Nor had officers been dispatched in any kind of bomb scare related to the devices.
"At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred," Schmautz said.
In Boston, however, state, local and federal authorities on Wednesday shut down the Boston University and Longfellow bridges, and blocked maritime traffic from the Charles River into Boston Harbor. Bomb squads scrambled throughout the city and its suburbs, snarling traffic and mass transit in the city.
Coakley and Menino did not rule out the possibility of criminal charges, or a civil suit to recoup what they say is the hundreds of thousands of dollars the city spent to respond to the bomb scares.
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the legal department is sending Turner a letter asking the company to reimburse the city for all costs incurred during the incident, but the authority had no plans to unilaterally file a lawsuit.
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Twenty-two-year-old Todd Venderlin, a design student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, saw one of the devices two weeks ago as he left a lounge in south Boston, according to The Boston Globe. He said he was stunned when he saw bomb squads removing them.
"It's so not threatening -- it's a Lite-Brite," he told the newspaper, referring to the children's toy that allows its users to create pictures by placing translucent pegs into an opaque board. "I don't understand how they could be terrified. I would if it was a bunch of circuits blinking, but it wasn't." |