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Photograph of MTA police K9 team by Diane Bondareff/AP
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced New York City will receive $153 million - up from last year's $61 million - in transit security grants. Wow - all we can do is remember Chertoff's 2005 remark, when trying discussing how security funding would be allocated, "The truth of the matter is, a fully loaded airplane with jet fuel, a commercial airliner, has the capacity to kill 3,000 people. A bomb in a subway car may kill 30 people. When you start to think about your priorities, you're going to think about making sure you don't have a catastrophic thing first."
Chertoff appeared at a Grand Central Terminal press conference, with Governor Eliot Spitzer and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly present. Spitzer hailed the decision, "This increase in our view is warranted by the simple reality that the risks we face are greater than those that are faced elsewhere in the nation. That as the hub for virtually all the major transportation systems in the nation, we have additional concerns and additional risks that we have to deal with everyday."
The money will be spit up between the MTA, NJ Transit and Amtrak, with 20% going to the NYPD. And Kelly revealed to the AP the funding enabled a new subway initiative, Operation Torch, to be up and running in three weeks: "You'll see officers with automatic weapons, you will see additional bomb-sniffing dogs funded by this program." Um, yay? And two other interesting facts, from NY1: "The MTA alone moves half of all mass transit riders in the nation" and, post- September 11, Homeland Security has spent $24 billion on aviation security but a little over half a billion on transit security.
Also, this makes us think: We haven't had our bags checked in a subway recently - have you?
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anybody ever gone to pet one of those cute lil' puppies? do the handlers get mad? are the dogs friendly?
Panty piddling paranoia. How many Americans have died because of Islamic terrorism from September 12, 2001 to today's date? Does "zero" sound about right?
Sometime last summer there were about 15 police officers (~4 groups of 4) with fully equipped M4's, shotguns and dogs, plus a helicopter circling overhead at the Newark Broad st station on NJ Transit. Since then I haven't seen anything like that since.
This is all basically for show and is basically set dressing. They could just hire out of work actors to dress up like cops and give them plastic machine guns to get the same effect of false security.
Palestine, you will again starting in March. The Times just ran an article that heavily armed teams with sniffer dogs will start patrolling the subways in March. What scares me is these guys will be working 12-hour shifts. I'm not sure I'd want to run into a cranky, tired cop carrying a submachine gun near the end of such a shift. Regular NYPD cops with pistols are bad enough. This is Amadou Diallo waiting to happen all over again.
That's a lot of money. Now we understand why the City Council's been so hot to push through the Department of Homeland's Security's order to restrict the public's use of radiological detectors in NYC.
Only an attempt by the city to try to spend some fed $ that has spent >6 years working it's way thru the system. If you say you don't need it now, next year you can't justfy asking for = or >. Let's see, I'm a terrorist with a backpack full of (fill in your favorite explosive here), I think I'll jus try to casually saunter by the guys in the HBO w/MP5's and the perky dogs & do my deeds.
And HughGass, (Nicely, they are cute pups), they are "working dogs" (sorry PETA), just like "seeing-eye-dogs". They are working, and honestly do love it. When they are on the job, be nice say hello, & don't distract them.
Damn I miss Dudley the Dynamite eating pup from the 6th.
Dadoc
Oddly enough, just today I noticed they were checking bags at the Grand Central subway entrance.
Which is great, because if someone's carrying something dangerous in his bag, there's like, a .01% chance he'll be caught. (Divide number of people searched in a day, maybe a couple of hundred, by total riders in a day, i.e. millions.) That is, if he doesn't see the bag check and go to another stop.
@1 - the city's K9 police don't seem to let you pet the dogs (or at least I've tried and been thwarted). However, you can pet the state police K9 dogs!