While the immediate response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings saved lives of critically wounded spectators, law enforcement authorities came under some criticism in a new report for what played out a few days later.

A throng of “self-deployed” officers from Massachusetts and neighboring states rushed to a Boston suburb without any coordination with police commanders, the report said, leading to dangerous crossfire, guns fired without proper aiming or even before a target was identified, and a risky fusillade fired at one suspect in the mistaken belief that he had fired on the police.

More than 2,500 law enforcement officers converged on Watertown, Mass. — where the two suspects were cornered — on April 19, 2013, four days after the bombings.

Early that morning, one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was mortally wounded in a firefight with the police during which the other suspect, his younger brother Dzhokhar, drove over him in a carjacked Mercedes S.U.V. That same evening, Dzhokhar was captured after he emerged bloody and wounded from a dry-docked and bullet-ridden boat in a Watertown backyard, after the police fired scores of shots at the boat.