"A Boston Police Department representative said the department was busy with the ongoing manhunt and unable to comment today on the scanner report on Mulugeta and Tripathi, or much else." - The BPD would've denied it if it didn't happen.

Now, before you all get going, please let me state my case.

Listening to the Police Scanner that evening, I distinctly recall Sunil Tripathi being identified as the bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev. I believe as well that Mike Mulugeta was identified as the second bomber. This was before Tamerlan Tsarnaev was positively identified following his death.

First, misidentifying suspects before apprehension is a pretty common mistake in law enforcement. Given that the police obviously did not have the identities of the terrorists before their apprehension it's possible that a misidentification could take place.

I believe that, given whatever control the police have of the scanner, they attempted to knock out the server for this portion of the broadcast, as my scan went dead. It only lasted a moment though, and I managed to refresh in time to hear them spell out Tripathi's name, followed closely by Mulugeta.

I am not the only one who heard this. It was reported by a twitter user, and later picked up by major media outlets. Keep in mind, Reddit was largely condemned, right or wrong, for having instigated a "witch hunt" and indeed, most of the early reports of Tripathi as the bomber appear to be from redditors who knew him remarking that the video appeared to possibly be of him (it was a very grainy video if everyone remembers).

And, while it's true this misconception may have originated on Reddit, if the police repeated this over the scanner then they took it seriously enough to label Tripathi the lead suspect (albeit a mistake). What would then follow was a cascade of misinformation surrounding the source of this information which would end with Reddit being chosen as chief instigator, rather than law enforcement.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not listen to Infowars, I do not believe this is a false flag, nor that any foreknowledge of the attack was had by law enforcement. I believe Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are to blame for this crime.

But far too many articles, including this one seem to run on the position that the police probably never said this over the scanner. But that isn't true, I believe. In fact, Mr. Madrigal seems to have forgotten that twitter time is a few hours fast from Eastern time (I think it's two hours, but it might be three). So he totally messes up here in terms of fitting the time of the source tweet to the radio broadcast.

The media that would clear this up would be an uninterrupted recording of the broadcast, beginning at 10:30 and ending at 1:30. The original tweet time, which might be 11:43 or 12:43 would be the place to start. It is important that this information be clarified, so that, god forbid, we do not make these same mistakes as a society if some future event similar takes place.

/r/boston Thread Link - gawker.com