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Transit Police move from fare gates to the trains themselves
By adamg on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 8:08am
MBTA police were busy making sweeps this morning through trains at Maverick and Park Street (Red Line toward Alewife). Mediacrity tweets she saw T cops in every station on the Red Line from Porter to South Station and at the Silver Line stop at South Station.
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Comments
HUT HUT HUT HUT
I love it. Two *possible* illegal immigrants help with a completely-normal-for-immigrants money transaction that happened to end with an almost purposefully incompetent "bomber", and the MBTA responds by flooding the one line which is furthest from all of the huffle, save maybe the Blue Line.
How about flooding the orange line, where people actually get robbed, stabbed, shot, etc?
They were at Back Bay last night
When I was going home (5:30?) they were holding trains while T police went briefly through each car. I'm guessing it was more security theater than specific threat because they just quickly looked through, didn't peer under seats or move papers on the seats.
I also saw a chubby lab who was more interested in the trash can than the passengers and the handler pulled it away without even looking in it. Perhaps it was the infamous tuna fish sandwich sniffing dog.
Love bomb-sniffing dogs
One went after my carryon bag at Bradley some years back during the height of the post-9/11 "second wave" Orange Alert madness.
I did not have any contraband on me, but for some reason I just knew that when the handler and his dog came back down the row of chairs for the second time, that I'd be nailed. Because by that point I had figured out that something in my bag that was perfectly legal, safe and kind of amazing had the potential to attract a lot of attention.
And just like I envisioned it, the handler and dog came by, almost passed completely, before the dog suddenly turned and lunged at my bag. The eyes of my fellow passengers grew wide, and I imagine their heartbeats began to race. There was a pregnant pause. The state police officer was about as chill as could be. He jerked the leash sharply and admonished the dog.
I slowly pulled the offending item out of my bag for the sake of those wondering what the hell had just gone on. Held it up so they could all see what triggered their moment of panic. Fear turned to broad smiles.
Never been more thankful that there is a discernible difference between the equally emphatic canine responses to "Explosives" and "Homemade M&M Cookies".
Instead of heading to Room 101, I went to the nearest store and grabbed a $3 bottle of milk.
EOD K-9 reaction
Lest any of you be left wondering, or laughing, there is a simple reason why that dog's handler pulled the dog away, and it is not because s/he thought s/he was engaged in security theater. The reason is because lunging at the bag is not the reaction that the dog has been trained to exhibit when it detects explosives or something explosive-like. Therefore, it is quite easy for a trained handler to know what is of concern and what is not. Your cookies clearly were not, because the dog would not have lunged for them.
shows how badly the dogs are trained
They're not supposed to lunge at *anything*, like guide dogs.
I seem to recall reading about a couple of "dog trainers" that took advantage of the whole mass hysteria after the WTC attacks, and were only barely training the dogs with basic obedience.
There are also food and drug dogs.
But most dogs don't lunge, they sniff and then sit right at the item and look up at the handler. Then the handler gives the dog a chew toy. Well, the shepard and lab type dogs usually get the chew toy, Im not sure what the Beagles and sniffer dogs like to get.
But you can't really call the dog usless unless the dog misses a scent of something it supposed to get. But I have seen dogs that have missed the scent. I saw a K-9 guy do a protective sweep of a house once. After the house was clear, the officer places an item that smells like a bomb stuff in an area where the dog can pick up the scent so the dog has a feeling of success and can play with his toy. The item was right on the floor and the dog wasn't picking up the scent. That was a failure.
not poorly trained.
Lunged was the original commenter's word, not mine, and I suspect the dog did not "lunge" in the manner of which we are thinking of it. But that is not why I wrote.
The dogs that are used for EOD at airports (such as Bradley, which is where Arborway had his/her experience) go through many months of thorough training at huge expense. And before anyone spouts off about the government wasting money on that, you should know that the reason it does so is because the private sector has yet to come up with an easily transported and handled device that even approaches the accuracy of a dog's nose with respect to explosive detection.
Perhaps the dog trainers you read about at the WTC were doing exactly what you said - being trained to remain calm in a harrowing environment.
"Lunged" in this case...
...means it went from walking, to crouched down with paws on either side of the bag, nose firmly shoved into the side - which it started licking - in about 3 seconds.
We're still in orange alert
Current alert level:
The alert system:
( http://www.geekandproud.net/terror/ )
OK.
Now that's funny!
The good old days
I remember when the "terror alert level" was considered the same as Big Bird's friend, Snuffleupagus:
Imaginary.
Were the transit police
Were the transit police asking for proof of payment? Because that is the job of transit police, although apparently, in NYC, they write tickets for taking two seats.