Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it strikes me as an important data point on the graph of the increasingly hair-trigger threshold for armed reaction:
Passengers who rode a Greyhound bus south from Maine before being detained in Portsmouth, N.H., on Thursday waited for hours without being told why their bus was surrounded by heavily armed police officers.
After being ordered off the bus one by one at gunpoint, they learned that *a passenger had called 911 to report the possibility of a bomb on board after hearing a person speaking in a foreign language, and someone talking about a bomb in English.* The last passenger to get off the bus -- at 8:40 p.m., nine hours after the incident began -- was a man from Burundi who speaks Swahili and only very rudimentary English.
Police said Friday that the man, who had boarded in Portland bound for New York City, told them he was terrified to leave the bus. They determined that he posed no threat and that there was no bomb.
..
Police cannot assume that a threat isn't serious, said Capt. Ted Ross, head of the Portland police bomb team.
"Absolutely, it's not overkill," he said of Thursday's response in Portsmouth. *"These things are only limited by the imagination of the people involved."*
[*emphasis added*]
Indeed - and it seems the "imagination of the people involved" is becoming quite vivid indeed: "Foreign language + key word = possible imminent threat."
Bonus question: Anybody care to put a (taxpayer-funded) cost on this action?
Full story at <http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/bus-standoff-proves-to-be-big-misunderstanding_2010-05-07.html>.