Denver Bomb Squad Takes Out Toy Robot

An anonymous reader writes "A robot met its end near Coors Field tonight when the Denver Police Department Bomb Squad detonated the 'suspicious object,' bringing to an end the hours-long standoff between police and the approximately eight-inch tall toy. From the article: "'Are you serious?' asked Denver resident Justin Kent, 26, when police stopped him from proceeding down 20th Street. Kent said that he lived just past the closed area, but was told he would have to go around via Park Avenue.'"

Comments

It's official

[oldspewey]

The terrorists have won.

Re:It's official

[dkleinsc]

If that's our standard, then I should point out that the Boston PD already topped this in the overreaction department back in 2007.

Re:It's official

[paeanblack]

The terrorists have won.

Why should they get the credit? It's our idiocy and our tax money that brought us to this state.

Saying "The terrorists have won", is shirking responsibility. This is our fault. We did this.

Re:It's official

[Rob the Bold]

The terrorists have won.

Why should they get the credit? It's our idiocy and our tax money that brought us to this state.

Saying "The terrorists have won", is shirking responsibility. This is our fault. We did this.

OK, "We lost. To the terrorists."

Re:It's official

[sgt scrub]

hmmm maybe what this country needs is an overreaction committee on overreactions. they could even outsource the oversite to the private sector.

Re:It's official

[scrib]

Right, we did it because the terrorists have scared the bejeezus out of us (or at least our officials). Terrorists have us scared, ergo they won. You know, by causing terror?

When I put on my tin foil hat, I realize that this event and others like the one in Boston are just terrorists probing us for weaknesses and testing the security of their communications. Surely, there are THOUSANDS of odd objects that are in weird places that no one ever reacts to at all. You want to make sure your lines of communication are secure? Leave a harmless toy somewhere are start talking about it as though it was a bomb. If the authorities go bonkers, you've been tapped.

Re:It's official

[EmagGeek]

It's not so much that terrorists have won, but much more that police departments get paid more for envisioning ever more over-reactionary and retarded ways to respond to things.

By convincing town boards that it is necessary to respond to a toy robot with a SWAT team, bomb squad, and a 200-strong terror response force, they can generate a ton of revenue from the town coffers that they get to spend on tacticool gear, weapons, and stuff.

Re:It's official

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yeah, but we beat the Machines! Woot! John Conner!

Did it at least have wires and blinking lights

[Qzukk]

and was flipping everyone off?

Oh no

[mr100percent]

Great, they shot Zerg from Toy Story.

If it's possibly an explosive device tied to a bridge support, why would it be a good idea for the police to detonate it?

Re:Oh no

[Gravitron 5000]

Generally, the bomb squad 'detonates' an object with a burst of extremely high pressure water. This disrupts the electronics which would make the bomb go boom, and generally smashes the bomb to bits. You essentially get pieces of a bomb that have been detonated by the bomb squad, rather than pieces of a bomb with a lot of collateral damage which would occur if the bomb itself detonated.

Re:Oh no

[meerling]

Actually it does, that's the whole point. You have a controlled explosion in that it goes off when you want it to, not the bomber. Additionally you have placed barricades and other protective structures to minimize the damage.
If you think about it, how can exposing an explosive to an explosion be expected to not set it off? Just a side note, if you blow up a nuke, you don't get a nuclear explosion, you get a dirty explosion. The reason is simple, to go nuclear it has to be a carefully timed and controlled explosion so the nuclear material reaches critical mass, which is something that won't happen from a blast originating outside it's core. Yes, Hollywood got it wrong about a million times, no big surprise. You ever watch a movie and people are afraid to drop the plastic explosions? I've burned plastic explosives, thrown it around like a ball of putty, and watched someone shoot it with a rifle at close range. It needs another explosion to set it off, dropping it won't do anything except make it splat like putty.
(On a side note, I've been in the vehicle, or within a 100' of around 40 or 50 car wrecks, and not even once has one of them caught fire or exploded. So yeah, Hollywood sucks on the realism score.)

Re:Oh no

[Shoten]

Actually it does, that's the whole point. You have a controlled explosion in that it goes off when you want it to, not the bomber. Additionally you have placed barricades and other protective structures to minimize the damage.

Better explanation: when the bomb squad "detonates" a bomb, they don't blow it up in the traditional sense. What they do is put what's known as a 'water charge' by it, which does contain a small bomb and a fair amount of harmless water. The water cushions the blast enough that it doesn't cause what's known as a 'sympathetic detonation' but still carries enough kinetic effec to, in essence, tear the bad-guy bomb apart without causing it to explode as the terrorist/attacker/nutjob intended.

Besides, you don't sever a bridge support by putting a small bomb near one side of it...you need two explosive charges against it, offset from each other to create a shearing effect. Those suckers are a lot tougher than they look. (Yeah, I have a merit badge in demolitions...my Boy Scout troop was a little more aggressive than most...)

Bang for your buck

[mykos]

Spending on anti-terrorism morbidly outstrips spending on terrorism. They fly a couple of planes into a buildings and the third largest country in the world spend over a trillion dollars on war and counter terrorism. As an added bonus, they get to laugh at our ridiculous countermeasures like fondling (or viewing nude) every man, woman, and child who commits suspicious activities like "boarding a plane".

Important fact missing from summary.

[blair1q]

"It was cemented in. That's odd," [Denver Police Spokesman Matt] Murray said.

That is odd. It probably should justify the involvement of the police.

However,

Murray said that a citizen called police at 3:27 p.m. to report the presence of the plastic white toy robot cemented to the base of a pillar supporting a footbridge near the intersection of 20th and Wazee streets.

How did the citizen know it was cemented in? Did he manipulate it enough to know it couldn't be removed? And if he did, how did that affect the likelihood that the object was a danger to anyone? And would the police have cared if someone hadn't been freaked-out by it?

Re:Important fact missing from summary.

[Chris Burke]

Sounds like that toy pissed off the Toy Mafia.

Wait for the law suit

[gurps_npc]

When they claim that the robot was a hoax bomb attempt, instead of admitting that the cops were too stupid to tell the difference between a toy and a bomb.

Re:Welcome to the new world...

[Amouth]

exactly how many "bombs" have been stopped this way? and exactly how many items get "left" places every day.

sorry but this security theater is getting way over done.. i understand playing devils advocate - but as far as i'm concerned the populous has turned to sheep..

the the bombs blow.. let them crash planes.. i'm still far more likely to die every day because the guy next to me is driving a 2 ton truck and to busy texting to notice he isn't in his lane any more.

people live - people die.. get over it.. if you just go about your life and let them just keep trying.. eventually it won't be worth it to them, and even if they don't stop - it doesn't matter..

there is no amount of things you can do that will stop people from doing what they set them selves out to do.

Nuke it from orbit...

[jacks0n]

It's the only way to be sure.

That's the point...

[MarcQuadra]

That's the point of 'asymmetric warfare'. We lose if we overreact, and overreacting is our nature. We got played. Hard.

But really, can you see this speech getting you elected to office:

"Sure, a lot of good folks died on 9/11, but we have to be strong. 9/11 is bait, we have to be sure not to walk into the trap, because we have so much more to lose than they can ever hope of gaining. Some are calling for war. War will cost trillions of dollars and thousands more American lives. I've authorized a small team of operatives to act on capturing the perpetrators dead or alive, and I've activated a special diplomatic corps to curry favor with host countries for allowing our teams to work on their soil. First we're going to ask politely, then we'll bribe them, and if that doesn't work, we'll threaten embargo and international action, and finally, we'll use our superior skill and technology to just go ahead and get the job done as cleanly as possible without permission. Hopefully it doesn't come to that."