Well, New Yorkers definitely said something after they saw something: There were two scares in Midtown Manhattan yesterday, and luckily, they were false alarms. First, a Bronx man claimed to have a bomb in his belongings at Penn Station, leading other people to alert authorities. While Raul Claudio did not have actually have a bomb, there is some speculation his anger over the Amtrak ticket representative's failure to find his reservation (he was heading upstate to a drug treatment center) could have fueled some suspicion. That and going up to the counter and saying he had a bomb. Claudio is being held on $15,000 bail; his lawyer claims only in this paranoid time would his client be jailed for saying something like that, but Gothamist doesn't really think about bombs as bragging rights. No one really wants to question whether or not a bank robber has a gun in a hold up, so if someone said he had a bomb, we'd definitely try to get the hell away and tell a police officer about the person.
Then a Gray Line tour bus supervisor alerted the police over the suspicious behavior of some men with backpacks and "stuffed" pockets on a tour bus. Reports conflict as to whether or not she thought they were Middle Eastern or South Asian, but at any rate, the police cordoned off part of Times Square to evacuate the bus and inspect the bags with a K9 unit. They were still made to kneel on the ground as the police investigated, and it turned out the men didn't even have backpacks! Newsday writes, "It wasn't clear whether the men rejoined the tour." They probably didn't attempt a refund either.
Photograph by the Daily News
