BOSTON – Civil engineer Tristan Cooke says that in the realm of bad ideas, placing odd-looking devices under bridges and near subway stations is right up there.

“On a scale of one to 10? Probably nine, especially with everything else going on in the world,” Cooke said as he boarded an Orange Line subway car at Downtown Crossing for his commute home. “That’s the last thing a city like Boston needs.”

More than a dozen illuminated devices planted around Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, later said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball.

Boston authorities arrested a man they said placed the devices and said they were investigating whether Turner and any other companies should be criminally charged.

Jim Warrick, a 50-year-old software engineer, said he wasn’t offended, noting that Turner did acknowledge the devices quickly.

“I wish it never happened in the first place, but they didn’t try to keep silent about it,” the Winchester resident said at the Downtown Crossing subway station. “It’s a bad idea. But these things could be worse.”

Peter Berdovsky, 27, of Arlington, was arrested Wednesday night on one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Authorities are investigating whether Turner and any other companies should be criminally charged, Coakley said. It wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday who might have hired Berdovsky.

“We’re not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city,” Coakley said at a news conference.

Turner did not notify officials of the publicity campaign until around 5 p.m., nearly four hours after the first calls came in about the devices, she and others said. The notification was via fax to city hall, Mayor Thomas Menino said

At least 14 of the devices were found, Coakley said. Menino said there are about 24 more devices around the city.

Berdovsky was arrested at 8:15 p.m. at his lawyer’s office, Coakley said. Her spokeswomen said they don’t have his lawyer’s name. A voicemail box at a phone number for Berdovsky was full Wednesday night. Coakley said Berdovsky planted many of the devices, although he’s just charged in connection with one device. He was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday.

“The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger,” Turner said in a statement.

It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia.

“We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger,” the company said. As soon as the company realized the problem, it said, law enforcement officials were told of their locations in all 10 cities.

The marketing firm that put them up, Interference Inc., has been ordered to remove them immediately, said Phil Kent, Turner chairman.

“We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger,” Kent said. “We appreciate the gravity of this situation and, like any responsible company would, are putting all necessary resources toward understanding the facts surrounding it as quickly as possible.”

Interference Inc. had no immediate comment. A woman who answered the phone at the New York-based firm’s offices Wednesday afternoon said the firm’s CEO was out of town and would not be able to comment until Thursday.

There were no reports from police Wednesday of residents in the other nine cities spotting similar devices.

Authorities said some of the objects looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them.

The first device was found at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway.

Later, police said four calls, all around 1 p.m., reported devices at the Boston University Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, both of which span the Charles River, at a Boston street corner and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center.

Two devices, however, turned out to be unrelated to the marketing campaign, Police Commissioner Edward Davis said.

The rash of calls around the same time is being investigated, Davis said.

“There’s no indication it came from panicked residents,” he said when asked if the calls were coordinated as part of the marketing campaign.

The package near the Boston University bridge was found attached to a structure beneath the span, authorities said.

Subway service across the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge was briefly suspended, and Storrow Drive was closed as well. A similar device was found Wednesday evening just north of Fenway Park.

Todd Vanderlin, a student at the Parsons School of Design in New York, said he found one of the devices under a bridge in South Boston on a Jan. 15 visit.

“I never thought it was a bomb,” said Vanderlin, who said he had taken a course on guerrilla marketing and identified the device as such.

Vanderlin said he was contacted two days later by a representative of Interference. He said the representative told him “we were hoping that people would take them.”

Vanderlin said he’s not affiliated with the promoters and has not seen the program, which he called “cheesy animation.”

Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists.

“Aqua Teen Hunger Force” is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network. A feature length film based on the show is slated for release March 23.

The cartoon also includes two trouble-making, 1980s-graphic-like characters called “mooninites,” named Ignignokt and Err – who were pictured on the suspicious devices. They are known for making the obscene hand gesture depicted on the devices.