On Monday, the day after it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American forces, the New York Police department received 62 reports of suspicious packages spotted throughout the city. The first call of the day reported a strange package sitting two blocks away from the scene of last May's failed car bombing attempt in Times Square. The "package" turned out to be a bag of garbage, and the subsequent 61 other suspicious items were equally cleared as non-threatening.

"The NYPD says such false alarms have become a frequent but necessary annoyance for authorities laboring to protect a nervous city in the post-9/11 world," NBC New York reports. But the fear of retaliation over bin Laden's death certainly prompted a spike--last Monday the NYPD only received 18 calls. According to NBC's local affiliate, "There were 10,566 reports of suspicious objects across the five boroughs in 2010. So far this year, the total was 2,775 as of Tuesday compared with 2,477 through the same period last year."

Photo by AP Images

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at cdickson at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Caitlin Dickson