Subway Security

Ten years ago this month, I set out with a friend of mine on a trip to baseball stadiums around the eastern half of the United States. We spent three weeks seeing the country and enjoyed games at 12 stadiums in 10 cities. We took backpacks into the games, and it was, despite the clichéd nature of the phrase, a carefree time.

And then in September of that year, things changed. Backpacks were viewed suspiciously and banned at sporting events. Passenger screening at airports grew tougher, and armed guards starting popping up everywhere: Penn Station, Grand Central, even sometimes in subway stations. After the 9/11 attacks, the mood changed as security of our nation’s transportation network became a paramount concern.

Over the next few months, we’re going to hear a lot about 9/11 and its implications. With the ten-year anniversary of the attacks looming, retrospects on past decade will emerge to the forefront, and already, we see this trend happening. Yesterday, the AP, in a long-form piece, explored how security underground in the New York City subways has changed since 2001. With armed NYPD officials leading police dogs and carrying radiation detectors fronting the story, the piece is heavy on the surveillance.

For police officers and city officials, armed cops in Penn Station and Grand Central are the way of things now, and we are constantly told to say something if we see something. “This is the new normal,” Inspector Scott Shanley of the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Division said to the AP. “The only people who sometimes get raised up are tourists.”

The piece highlights what we know: Madrid, London, Moscow and Minsk are among the cities whose subways suffered terrorist attacks. The cops are diligent in New York, but the system is very porous. “It’s really a potentially very vulnerable environment — one that you can’t totally protect,” William Bratton from Kroll Security said. “That’s the reality of it. … It’s a unique challenge.”

As the article talks tangentially about civil liberties concerns that were quashed by the courts — random bag checks still aren’t very popular — it glosses over the bigger issues: Is all of the outward display of security for good or for theater? “I look at people and who’s to judge?” Robin Gant, a commuter heading to Grand Central said. “You just never know who might be the one. No matter how safe you feel, you’re always on yellow alert.”

There’s a line between a cultivating a culture of fear and working behind the scenes to ensure security. Just how well is it working? Yesterday, a reader sent me the following description of incident that happened to this weekend. I’ll share it in the original:

“I was just on a subway train and there was a brand new backpack, all alone in the car I entered into at 14th St. By the next stop I got off and told the conductor. She listened but didn’t seem to care. That 1 train traveled for OVER 20 MINUTES uptown til the MTA actually did something about it. Finally at 103rd Street, an MTA official came on to the car and just casually took the bag off.

“I imagine the MTA must have some sort of protocol to deal with this type of situation. When they constantly ask us to “say something” if we “see something,” what good is it if a train makes 13 stops before someone inspects a potential bomb? Do you think the train conductor followed protocol? And if so, is that protocol at all effective?”

Over the next few months, I’m going to spend some time exploring those questions. What is the proper protocol? Is it effective? Those are questions that need answering. We see television commercials and a print advertising campaign from the MTA based around exactly the scenario described above, and a backpack sitting alone in a subway car is a red flag. Those are the types of incidents that should be taken more seriously than police officers with guns at Penn Station. Are they or is the security theater just for show?

The award-winning canine and its handler. (Photo via MTA/Patrick Cashin)

If you smell something, bark at something. That could be the newest MTA slogan after their K-9 unit took him first place at the U.S. Police Canine Association 2011 trials for explosives detection. The authority announced that Officer Kevin Pimpinelli and his pup Mullen won the crown last month. The trials tested human/canine enforcement teams on the speed and accuracy with which they can locate explosives while “adhering to accepted searching practices and procedures.” The team beat out 28 others at regionals and seven pairs in the finals.

Pimpinelli spoke glowing off his dog. “I’ve been working with him for five years, and right from day one he’s had an excellent temperament for a police canine,” he said. “I could bring him into a classroom full of kindergarteners and he’d be the gentlest dog you can imagine. And then if I gave the command, he’d instantly be searching for explosives.”

The MTA, meanwhile, praised its K-9 unit overall. “Canines are invaluable partners with capabilities that no human or machine can duplicate” Douglas Zeigler, MTA Director of Security, said. “This national honor helps to confirm that the efforts we have made since 9/11 to create a strong anti-terror canine force have been effective. But the real confirmation can be seen every day on the front lines, where our canines help to keep our railroad customers and employees safe and secure.” So there you go.

Let’s try this one on for size: Nine days ago, when President Barack Obama announced the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, the intelligence materials gathered from the terrorist’s Pakistani hideout revealed nascent plans to attack the United States’ rail system at some point in the indeterminate future. For terrorists looking for an easy strike, rail attacks aren’t a new idea. We’ve seen them in Moscow, Tokyo, Madrid and London, to name a few, and rail systems that cover vast expanses remain relatively porous.

So what would you say an appropriate response from the Senior Senator from the state with the most commuter rail passengers would be? Do you think he would propose shoring up weak access points? Or do you think he’d rather go in for the quick score that would bring travel headaches, higher costs and few real safety upgrades to the trains? As you can imagine, Chuck Schumer picked the security theater found in the latter.

In interviews with reporters on Sunday, Schumer called upon Amtrak to implement a “no-ride” list similar to the airlines’ no-fly list. The Department of Homeland Security would share its database with the train operator, and all they would have to do is check the ID of every single person who buys a ticket and boards a train. According to Schumer, this plan would come at “virtually no extra cost” to the government.

“Circumstances demand we make adjustments by increasing funding to enhance rail safety and monitoring on commuter rail transit and screening who gets on Amtrak passenger trains, so that we can provide a greater level of security to the public,” Schumer said.

As Gawker noted, that’s a pretty out-there claim by our Senator. Schumer, wrote Jeff Neumann, “of course failed to explain how that statement is even remotely true. He wants Amtrak employees to cross-reference names from the list with passengers. Amtrak alone last year had 28.7 million passengers. Now, just add all of the commuter rail lines across the country and that’s a whole lot of cross-referencing. Well, thanks for fighting the good fight, Chuck. And good luck with that!”

Schumer’s plan for Amtrak also doesn’t address the system’s real vulnerabilities. Terrorists boarding trains shouldn’t be our primary concern right now. Rather, thousands of miles of exposed tracks and bridges and tunnels that remain easy to access should be the focus of the government’s security efforts and dollars.

While Amtrak promised to “review Schumer’s proposal,” DHS seemed lukewarm. A spokesman told Newsday that the Department has expended over $1.6 billion on security enhancements over the past five years, and they’ve done so in a way that isn’t as confining as airpot security. It is the difference between a plan designed to make us feel safer and one that actually makes us safer.

Despite the uproar today — Schumer’s statements have gotten play from virtually every media outlet across country — his idea isn’t a new one. It was originally put forward by the 9/11 Commission back in 2004, but Amtrak has never acted on the “no-ride” list. It also comes at a time when the federal government cut rail security spending by $50 million.

Meanwhile, what of our commuter rails, equally as vital and equally as vulnerable? Schumer says passengers on carriers such as the LIRR and Metro-North wouldn’t have to show IDs, but he would like to see security expenses increased for commuter railroads across the country. It’s always just a matter of money.

As the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks loom over the fall of 2011, the MTA has released new print and TV ads in its award-winning security campaign. Still urging those riders who see something to say something, the authority has released a series of new commercials and placards that will appear later this month. The new ads show what the MTA is calling “potential terrorists” leaving bags on subways, buses and commuter rail trains.

“The safety and security of our customers is our top priority,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “We are hardening our infrastructure and conducting enhanced policing in coordination with our regional law enforcement partners. But these ads reinforce the important role our customers will always play in ensuring the safety of transit users throughout the entire MTA system.”

The latest public awareness campaign will cost the MTA $10 million, but the Department of Homeland Security is footing the bill. In return, the MTA granted DHS the license to use its slogan — “If you see something, say something” — in nationwide anti-terrorism ads. The latest spots, which include these print ads, were designed by Korey, Kay & Partners, an ad agency with long-standing business ties to the MTA.

As I was browsing through the upcoming MTA Board committee meeting books this evening, I came across a surprising number. After ejecting 2676 straphangers from the system in March of 2010, police officers removed just 668 folks for misbehaving. That’s a decrease of 75 percent, and at a time when arrests are up a few percentage points, this drop in ejections is surprising.

It is, in fact, so surprising that Erik Ortiz of amNew York wrote an entire article on the topic. Riders speaking to the free daily spoke anecdotally of the atmosphere underground. “It’s a problem late at night. Recently there was a man speaking loud getting close to people. You can tell he was inebriated and that makes you feel unsafe,” one rider said.

Of course, drunk, loud people seem to be the least of our worries. Homeless people inhabit subway cars, and panhandlers are supposed to be removed from the subway system. Ortiz tried to determine the cause of the decrease, but answers weren’t forthcoming. He reports:

While authorities would not speculate why there are fewer people being kicked out of the subways, the transit union yesterday said the loss of station agents is a “critical factor.”

“Passengers in stations without an agent really have nowhere to complain other than the emergency call (boxes) that most people don’t even realize is there,” said Jim Gannon, a spokesman for the Transit Workers Union 100.

The union said the MTA has about 480 fewer agents than a year ago. An MTA spokesman declined to speculate on the ejection numbers. The NYPD was unable to say why officers are booting fewer riders, even as they cuff more crooks. Transit arrests are up, and increased nearly 8 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Gannon’s point seems to be the union’s rote response, but it also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Even if a station agent placed a call to a police officer — a rare occurrence indeed — it would take more time to find the perp and remove him from the system than is worthwhile. Usually these ejections occur during cops’ routine rounds underground, and the presence of station agents shouldn’t cause a 75 percent year-to-year drop.

Furthermore, recent months suggest a pattern is emerging. As Ortiz reported, “In the first three months of 2011 compared to 2010, the number of riders being booted out of the subways dropped 66 percent, 7,794 to 2,631.” That seems fishy.

So what’s going on here? It seems to me as though the cops are scaling back their quality-of-life enforcement efforts underground. As the article notes, offenses for which one may be ejected include jumping a turnstile, panhandling, drinking or smoking, playing a radio audible to others (hah!) or carrying bulky items that interfere with subway operations. If cops are no longer patrolling for these offenses, ejections will decline.

Now someone just has to figure out why the cops aren’t on the case. After all, we’ve all seen instances undergound of ejectionable offenses, but rarely are people removed from the system. Instead, summons and arrest totals have increased, and the word “quota” somehow winds its way through my mind. After all, no one gets credit for an ejection when a ticket or arrest will do, and as NYPD staffing numbers are reduced, the quality-of-life violations undergound will likely increase.

Over the past few years, the MTA has noticed an uptick in a certain type of crime. I’m not talking about technology thefts but rather groping incidents, and today, the issue earned itself some much-deserved prominent press. In his Monday transit column, Daily News reporter Pete Donohue focused on subway perverts who grope unsuspecting women.

He writes:

On average, there are about 600 reported incidents of riders being groped, flashed, grinded or similarly assaulted in the subway every year, according to the police. But NYPD brass and advocates say that’s just a fraction of the misdemeanor sex crimes taking place on trains. In reality, the number of incidents annually is probably in the thousands, some say.

“Oftentimes when people are being harassed, they’re scared, they’re not thinking, ‘Let me find a police officer,'” said Emily May, an R train rider and co-founder of the anti-harassment advocacy group Hollaback! “They’re thinking, ‘Let me get out of this situation.'”

…The NYPD has some undercover officers on the lookout for perverts, but the size of the subway force has shrunk due to budget cuts, just like the number of aboveground cops. Over the last three years, police have averaged 450 arrests for misdemeanor sex crimes, according to NYPD stats. Many creeps who are busted have been around the seedy subway block before. Approximately 15% have been handcuffed previously for similarly loathsome behavior, a police spokesman said.

In his article, Donohue talks about how few defendants face sexual assault-based charges and how the city needs to “wage an all-out war against these two-legged rodents.” He’s right, and over the years, the MTA has tried, with little success, to fight the tide of groping. The agency unveiled a new PSA campaign — one they currently overhauling — in 2008, but sexual harassment remained the leading quality-of-life subway crime. That behavior should not be tolerated.

Created specifically for the subway environment, the Help Point is designed to be an easily recognizable communications tool for customers who need to either report an emergency or ask for travel directions. Photo by Felix Candelaria for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Once upon a time, back in 2005, a shop called Antenna Design built a prototype for an in-system intercom that would provide an immediately recognizable beacon for emergency communications. Termed Help Point, the intercom system won a Bronze medal at the 2006 IDEA Awards and has been a part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection since 2006. It was also included in an exhibit at MoMA in 2005 entitled SAFE: Design Takes on Risk. For a device that hadn’t yet seen the light of day, it had an impressive pedigree.

Last fall, in an effort to ensure a safer subway system amidst personnel cuts, the MTA announced a Help Point Intercom pilot program. By the end of 2010, two stations would be outfitted with these intercoms in an effort to determine whether or not the design worked and how feasible it would be to bring the blue-light beacons to the system’s remaining 466 stations.

Yesterday, a few months late, the MTA unveiled the pilot. At both 23rd St. and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall along the Lexington Ave. IRT line, these Help Point Intercoms have gone live. With their blue lights, they are evocative of safety features often highlighted on tours of college campuses, and the MTA has high hopes for the design.

“These Help Points will make our subway system safer and easier to use, expanding access to assistance throughout stations in a way that wasn’t possible before,” MTA Chairman & CEO Jay H. Walder said. “This is just another step in our efforts to bring new technology to customers in ways that make using the transit system better every day.”

These intercoms, a far cry from the ones currently in use that are so easy to ignore and hardly ever work, are designed to be “highly visible and easy to use.” Nine of them are in place at 23rd St., and another ten have been put along the platform at the Brooklyn Bridge stop. As part of the pilot, the MTA is also working to determine whether wireless communications or a hard-wired line will better fit their needs.

In terms of functionality, the new ADA-compliant devices have both an emergency call button and a green information button that will connect straphangers with the station agent on duty. As Transportation Nation’s Jim O’Grady notes in covering what he aptly calls new subway emergency thingies, the audio quality will be digital and much improved over the current intercom system. “The older devices,” he writes, “did not have digital audio, which sometimes made it hard to hear and be heard. They also had an indistinct design that made them blend with their surroundings–few riders knew where they were or what to do with them.”

Transit head Thomas Prendergast highlighted these improvements as well. “These units have a fresh new appearance that will make the Help Points easy to identify. The sound will be crisp, clear and easy to understand which is an important feature especially in the subway environment,” he said. “As designed, the Help Points are major step beyond the Customer Assistance Intercoms now in our stations.”

As the pilot is beginning, the MTA is vague on future plans. The authority says that “the plan calls for the installation of the Help Points in all of the system’s 468 subway stations.” Early estimates put the per-station cost at $300,000, and the MTA would have to purchase 5000 intercoms to place one every 150 feet on station platforms. Total installation costs for the entire system then would reach $139,800,000. Maintenance costs would be substantial as well, and the MTA doesn’t exactly have the cash on hand right now. Can the MTA makes us safer without spending the dollars?

The MTA’s capital security improvements are moving forward slowly, but these key investments are way over budget and four years behind schedule, according to yet another report released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The audit — the seventh from DiNapoli in recent years that focuses on the agency’s security efforts — praises the authority for improving the porous system’s safety but worries that there is not enough money to fund 16 necessary projects. Furthermore, DiNapoli notes that the projects which should have wrapped in September 2008 are not due to finish until mid-2012 and that costs on key projects — including the camera system — have more than doubled in the ensuing years.

“The capital security program the MTA has implemented since 9-11 has made New Yorkers more secure,” said DiNapoli said in a statement. “The MTA has made progress, particularly in the last two years. But the mass transit system is still inherently vulnerable. Individual projects in this program are months if not years behind schedule and well over budget, and additional capital improvements are needed. My office will continue to track MTA management of this program.”

DiNapoli’s press release sums up the report (pdf):

The projects in Phase 1 of the MTA’s capital security program target the system’s most vulnerable and heavily used assets, including stations, transit hubs, bridges and tunnels. Each project involves one or more facilities and security improvements to elements such as electronic security and surveillance, fire, life and safety and evacuation enhancements, perimeter protection and structural hardening. This phase, originally scheduled for completion by September 2008, will not be completed until June 2012.

After more than nine years, the MTA has completed 11 of the original 16 security projects as well as elements of the five remaining projects. The MTA has hardened all 14 facilities planned for Phase 1; improved lighting, communication systems, and smoke and fire detection equipment in 15 facilities; installed perimeter protection around four facilities; and despite significant setbacks, the electronic security program.

As of December 2010, the MTA had completed 31 of 38 planned construction tasks and the remaining seven tasks were all in the process of construction, though more than 60 percent of the 38 tasks were behind their established schedules, including 11 that were behind by more than one year (five tasks were more than 30 months late). The cost of Phase 1 (including two facilities that were deferred from Phase 1 to Phase 2) has grown from $591 million to $851 million, an increase of 44 percent.

Ultimately, according to the report, Phase 2 will attempt to fund 33 of the original 57 areas that need security upgrades, but 16 projects will remain only on the drawing board until money becomes available.

As DiNapoli notes, since 2007, he has issued 27 releases on the MTA which include 14 audits and 13 top-line reports. He is still conducting eight more audits and a forensic audit on overtime and another performed in conjunction with the city comptroller’s office. Still, I’m left with the same question I have every time he sends out a release: What’s the point?

The MTA’s troubles with their security improvements and the exponentially increasing costs have drawn newspaper headlines for years. DiNapoli’s report doesn’t highlight ways in which the authority can implement cost-savings measures and fails to mention what they’re doing wrong. Do we really need to expend more taxpayer dollars on something we already know?