by David Taber

Somerville will pursue a joint action to recover costs incurred yesterday when a guerilla marketing scheme was mistaken for a terrorist threat.

"There may be a tendency on the part of some people to laugh this off because it was a marketing stunt designed to promote a cartoon show on cable television.  But I guarantee that the taxpayers of Somerville and surrounding cities aren’t laughing ‚Äì and neither are the commuters and the public safety professionals who had to cope with the consequences, " Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone said.

Curtatone said he will coordinate his actions with the City of Boston, the state Attorney General’s Office, and the Middlesex County District Attorney, but he did not rule out the possibility of the city taking unilateral legal action.

According to reports from City Hall, Somerville public safety units were dispatched at 8:30 on the morning of Jan. 31 to assist state police in managing traffic diversions required by the closure of Interstate 93 when an electrical device was reported at Sullivan Square.   

At approximately 2:30 this afternoon, Somerville had to respond to another of the devices when it was discovered under a McGrath Highway overpass just outside busy Union Square, the report stated.

In a statement released late yesterday afternoon, Cartoon Network’s corporate parent Turner Broadcasting announced that the devices found in multiple locations in Boston were part of a multi-city, outdoor marketing campaign for an adult cartoon.