“No one, my officers or even myself . . . ever receive any training that would prepare us for something like this.” That’s what Ed Deveau, chief of the Watertown, MA, Police Department, told Boston radio station WBUR-FM about his police department’s 20-hour search on April 19, 2013, for now-convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Four days earlier, Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan set off two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others.
On Thursday, October 26, at 6:30 p.m. in Georgian Court’s Casino Auditorium on the Lakewood campus, Chief Deveau will speak about his experiences leading his police officers, state police, and federal agencies in their successful effort to apprehend the bomber. Despite his role as the leader of this mission, Chief Deveau insists the capture was a team effort.
“When I rushed to the scene,” he told WBUR, “all I could think and pray is that my officers were going to be OK when I got there. We caught him that day. Bin Laden didn’t get caught for how long? We won in Watertown. No one else got hurt. As the police chief in a very tense day, that’s what I take away from that.”
In an interview with CBS News’ Dean Reynolds, he spoke highly of his officers: “It’s just an amazing bunch of six guys.”
Chief Deveau retired in July 2015, but he postponed his retirement in order to attend Tsarnaev’s trial, going to the federal courthouse nearly every day of the proceedings. He served as police chief for 14 years and was a member of the force for 32 years. (Tsarnaev was sentenced by a jury to death by lethal injection. He is currently in the ADX supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.)
Admission to Chief Deveau’s speech is free.