And what exactly was the purpose of women being yanked out of their homes with children in their arms, having guns pointed in their face while they were being patted down and their homes being searched? THEY didn't fit any description of the 'terrorist', did they?
Here's how cooperation with the police looks in my world. Do you want me to phone in tips if I see something suspicious? I'm happy to. Do you want to ask me to not engage the killer and instead call the police? I'm happy to oblige. Do you want to deputize me and some other folks on the block and ask us to man a checkpoint on our street to check the ID of people driving on the street? I'm happy to be deputized. Do you want me to help the police by taking my dog out so that the dog can follow a trail of the killer? Sure, hang on for a sec while I go and get my dog.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being asked to cooperate with police, but that doesn't give them a blank check. They wouldn't have been able to get a warrant with "Your Honor, the suspect is somewhere in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area and therefore we claim exigent circumstances and reasonable grounds to search every home in Boston in order to find the suspect." Yeah right. Good luck with that. If you have the guy pinned down to an 8 house block then a judge can issue a proper warrant and you can search the 8 houses. A whole city though is way over the line. Same too the treatment of the homeowners. Aiming your rifles at the homeowners as they exit their homes, ordering them to have their arms in the air, patting them down for weapons is pure Gestapo tactics. If the homeowner bears a resemblance to the suspect, then you most certainly have reasonable grounds to take such precautions but otherwise you're just raping people of their liberty.
Exigent circumstances are extremely time dependent. A series of bomb attacks from an unknown suspect creates the condition of future bomb attacks being very likely. A bomb suspect who is identified and on the run, wounded and on foot severely lessens the exigent circumstances. He's still a threat but the threat he poses is now on the level of a common killer on the run, such as a wife-killer or a guy in a bar fight or an ex-con who vows to never go to prison again. Cops deal with situations like this quite frequently without having to impose martial law type police state actions.
You cannot declare the constitution to be on vacation every time a cop gets killed or a bomb goes off, or a criminal is running and hiding from police. The Court has been clear that an emergency means that there is probable cause to believe that someone is in the process of being victimized or harmed. Not... something scary has happened and we want the scariness to end.
When did it become unreasonable require the cops to follow the law?