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NY police begin random bag searches on subways

Posted on: Friday, 22 July 2005, 11:55 CDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York police began randomly searching bags of subway passengers on Friday in the aftermath of a second set of London bombings in a move that appeared to ruffle few feathers during the morning commute.

Riders on the nation's largest subway system waited patiently while officers at various stations around the city combed through their briefcases and knapsacks on the first day of what Mayor Michael Bloomberg said would be a practice that would go on indefinitely.

"Clearly we'll do it for a little while. It's partially designed to make people feel comfortable ... and keep the potential threat away," Bloomberg said in his weekly radio show, adding that there were no new threats to New York.

In Washington, D.C., officials said they were not instituting a similar system of random searches on subways.

"We're not doing it at this time, but we're still considering it. We will be monitoring how it works in New York City," Washington Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said.

Neither were random searches launched in Boston, although security was stepped up with officers and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The new searches in New York, announced on Thursday, prompted criticism from the New York Civil Liberties Union that it could invite the targeting of certain people.

"One of the dangers of random searches is that they can invite the possibility of racial, ethnic or religious profiling," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said.

Police promised there would be no racial profiling, and Bloomberg too said the practice would not be allowed.

"If you think everybody with blue eyes is a terrorist, you can't just stop everybody with blue eyes," the mayor said.

"I think if we've learned anything, it's that you can't predict what a terrorist looks like. Terrorists come in all sizes and forms," he said.

Searches at a subway station near the city's bustling Port Authority bus station certainly appeared random, as police stopped white tourists, a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke, an Asian man, a young black woman and a man wearing a turban.

"I think it's necessary, especially at this time, as a precaution. I think it should have been in place even before the London attacks," said subway passenger Tony Decal at the Columbus Circle subway station.

"If it is random, I think it is fair," he added.

SUBWAY WORKERS PROTEST

Security on New York's transit system had already been stepped up since the July 7 bombings in London, when three subway trains and a bus were targeted by suicide bombers in the first suicide bombings to strike Western Europe.

New York has been on high alert for another attack since Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers killing almost 3,000 people.

However, city transit officials have been criticized recently for only spending a fraction of the funds set aside for security.

A recent New York Times report showed that more than two years after the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it was committing nearly $600 million to improving security, only about $30 million had been spent as of March.

Almost all the money spent went toward consultants and study, the Times story said.

Subway workers, meanwhile, held a news conference on Friday to protest a lack of adequate training for train operators and conductors in emergencies.

If attacks similar to those that occurred in London were to happen in New York, "We'd be messed up," said Joseph Irizarry, a subway train operator.

"We don't have the training for that situation," he said.

Meanwhile, shares of video surveillance system manufacturer Global ePoint Inc. jumped more than 50 percent after it unveiled a new product that can monitor passengers on any form of mass transport and provide live video and archive 720 hours of recorded data.

Source: REUTERS

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