Washington – Local police departments in 13 states and security agents from Amtrak and the federal Transportation Security Administration planned to carry out a show of force at 150 railroad stations from Virginia to Vermont on Tuesday morning. The drill will include random searches of passengers and their belongings, as well as other, unspecified security measures, the authorities announced.
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“You’ll see police where you wouldn’t normally see them,’’ said Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak. “It’s an exercise to familiarize law enforcement agencies with the railroad environment.’’ He said that in most cases the police “will just be there,’’ but that they would in some cases inspect luggage, briefcases and other belongings.
The surge will last through the morning rush hour, especially between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., but it may be repeated at some time in the future, officials said.
The drill is intended to be a “demonstration of ongoing collaborative capability to expand counter-terrorism and incident response along the Northeast Corridor railway system,’’ Amtrak and the T.S.A. said in a statement that was embargoed for release until this morning. The agencies said it was the largest exercise of its kind.
Participating agencies include the police departments from small jurisdictions, like Kingston, R.I., and Old Saybrook, Conn., Linden and Metuchen, N.J., Lower Merion, Pa., and Harpers Ferry, W.Va., as well as from big cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.
Amtrak and the T.S.A. have previously conducted drills at single stations, in which they have run passengers through portals that sniff for explosives. At times, Amtrak has put police on trains coming in and out of Pennsylvania Station in New York to check passengers’ identities and, on occasion, inspect their luggage .
Rail passengers and other readers are invited to share their observations in the comments box below.
ANything that makes us safer, I fully support, including the long security lines ta the airport. If it stops 1 terrorist, it’s all worth it! Complacency is very dangerous!!
This is totally unAmerican and unconstitutional. Benjamin Franklin was right when he said that those who would give up liberty in order to gain a little security will lose both and deserve neither. The terrorists win when we surrender our civil liberties and allow OUR SERVANTS to treat all people as suspects—guilty until proven innocent. We are not in the circumstances of Israel. The objective of these exercises isn’t to keep us safe. It is to intimidate us and make us fearful, so that the perjurers, pickpockets, and war criminals who run the United States can get away with their crimes at our expense. Why is bin Laden still running around after all these years? I remember when America was a free country.