Subway Security

As September 11 dawns, the city takes a collective breath. It’s always a little quieter, a little more somber around New York as we all think back to 2001 when nothing made sense.

This year, the MTA has, perhaps coincidentally, released an update to that ubiquitous” anti-terrorism campaign. “Si ves algo, di algo,” our MetroCards exhort us in Spanish. “If you see something, say something.”

In their press release, the MTA is touting is “the next generation” of the See Something/Say Anything ad campaign. No longer content with bragging about the 1944 people who bothered to say anything, the MTA is again pushing the message that unattended packages should be viewed suspiciously. Korey Kay & Partners, the ad campaign contracted to product the creative, has released a few television commercials (here, here and here) and new placards and print ads.

The ads are very reminiscent of the first generation placards. Again, the MTA is focusing on something — a box, a backpack, a suitcase — that is alone on a platform unattended. No one is around to notice it; no one is around to claim it as his or her own. It’s minimalism at its finest.

“The security of our customers is our paramount concern,” MTA Executive Director and CEO Elliot Sanders said. “These new ads remind our customers not to be complacent about what they see around them. They also reinforce the important role our customers play in ensuring the safety of transit users throughout the entire MTA system.”

The MTA also informs the world in their press release that they’ve licensed this catchy awareness slogan to 37 other transit networks around the globe, and in fact, the authority earned a trademark in the phrase last December. But is it an effective slogan?

As I look at the ads and think about the responses the MTA has — or hasn’t — gotten as a result, I wonder if they’re driving the point home hard enough. It’s not easy to associate a forgotten bag with a potential terrorist weapon. We see forgotten bags on the subway all the time, and so far in New York, none of them have blown it. Collectively, we know it can happen; we’ve seen it, on TV and in the papers, in Madrid and London. But those images seem remote to us in New York City where, seven years after the World Trade Center attacks, our city has that false aura of impermeability around it again.

The MTA can’t use scare tactics to convince its customers to report any potential package. With a vast, open system filled with easy access points, due diligence on the part of the riders is a necessity for any anti-terror efforts. But perhaps it’s time to refresh the old “If you see something, say something” refrain. It’s old hat by now, and if it’s one thing New Yorkers manage to look past, old hats are it.

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Over the last two days, The New York Times has uncovered the police plans for the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. Originally presented as an open space with appropriate security measures, the rebuilt Ground Zero, as the NYPD sees it, will be a heavily-guarded area with an around-the-clock police presence.

While we’re only tangentially concerned with the above-ground world, when The Times via a City Room post drilled down on the police presentation, the findings impacted the underground world of the subway and should be dismaying to subway advocates, to say the least. According to the document, the police are aiming to conduct sweeps of train cars that pass underneath the World Trade Center complex. Even worse are the calls for on-board searches that could delay train cars up and down the various subway lines, creating even more subway delays.

According to the 36-page presentation that The Times says has been given “by top-ranking police officials in recent months,” the security zone encompassing Ground Zero would call for teams of eight to ten officers led by a sergeant to conduct on-board security sweeps. The NYPD would “briefly hold” trains in the station while officers — one per car — conducted the searches.

I can’t argue against security measures put in place to protect the subway system. As it stands now, New York City Transit’s underground network is a rather porous and vast system that runs under and above some of the city’s most vital areas. Hundreds of trains pass under Times Square and over the Manhattan Bridge each day. Rail yards are left unguarded and are accessible to anyone who puts some effort into getting in.

But subway cars are a different matter. The NYPD should not get into the business of holding subway cars in stations to conduct sweeps. While they may wish to only “briefly” keep those cars sitting idle, a brief delay, as NYC Transit is wont to point out, echoes up and down the entire line. If the NYPD holds a Brooklyn-bound R train at Cortlandt St. for a few minutes, trains in Astoria will feel like the shockwave of that delay. Subway service, already slower than we’d like and subject to a rising number of delays, will slow to a crawl around a Ground Zero security bottleneck.

The subways should be safer, but security measures should not include more delays. The NYPD has to find a way to improve subway security without sacrificing efficiency, and this plan — while simply a proposal — highlights measures that could drastically impact subway performance. That is not an adequate solution to any security problem.

Update: As NY1’s Bobby Cuza noted in the comments, this is not a new NYPD tactic. As part of Operation TOMS (Transit Order Maintenance), the NYPD has been conducted 40-second sweeps of train cars. Here, they are proposing to add the WTC site to their list of heavily-trafficked and closely-guarded stations. I haven’t heard much — negative or positive — about Operation TOMS, but I’m still not too keen on police sweeps holding up train traffic, even if only for a supposed 40 seconds.

Update 11:26 p.m.: A long time ago, all the way back in August of 2005, the MTA unveiled plans to install security cameras in subway stations as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The cameras were supposed to be installed and fully operation within three years which would put this project’s completion date in, oh, about six weeks.

Well, as astute riders may have noticed by now, the vast majority of subway stations do not have cameras and those that do had them long before 2005. While the MTA promised a pilot program for cameras in subway cars a few months ago, New York City is a long way away from seeing and being seen by surveillance cameras in the subway stations.

Today, the news got a little worse — or better, if you feel these cameras are an intrusion of privacy — when the MTA conceded that the project still has a steep mountain to climb. And according to a few anonymous agency officials, the original timeline for this project was overly ambitions. Who woulda guessed?

William Neuman has the story:

Aging fiber-optic cable in Brooklyn and Queens has become the latest obstacle to a planned high-tech system of surveillance cameras meant to safeguard the subway and commuter railroads, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials…

On Wednesday, the authority’s board authorized the replacement of 84,000 feet of old fiber-optic cable, which was installed in the late 1980s. The replacement will cost $5 million and is being done as part of a separate project to build out the subway’s data network.

According to a board document, tests on the cable showed that it had “many broken fibers unsuitable to carry the high bandwidth required” to transmit large amounts of data, which hindered the surveillance camera project. The document did not say how long it would take to replace the cable.

The anonymous officials conceded that the MTA’s ambitious plans may not even be realized for another two or three years. There is no longer an internal timetable however, and the MTA must first replace a fiber optics cable outside that, according to Neuman, runs along the J/Z line from Broadway Junction to Sutphin Boulevard and along the E to Union Turnpike.

So as we sit here in 2008, and it looks like our subway stations won’t have security cameras until nearly a full decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist and attacks, around six or seven years after the Madrid Metro bombing in 2004 and five or six years after the London Undergound attacks. Point fingers anyway or bemoan the presence of cameras in the stations, but no matter how you slice or dice it, that’s quite the response time.

After a few weeks of random purse-snatches and one escape through a subway tunnel that have led to lingering tensions between New York City Transit and the NYPD, the cops finally arrested the suspected purse-snatcher. While the resolution of this drama is a welcome denouement, the real story comes from an analysis of recent subway crime statistics. They may have bottomed out with nowhere to go but up.

At the end of December, the MTA announced a period of record low crime in the subways. While ridership reached a 50-year peak, crime had hit an all-time low. But it was not to last.

According to recent numbers, crime numbers in the subway saw a slight uptick during the first four months of the year. Pete Donohue reports:

The latest data shows that crime rose slightly during the first four months of this year – the third time in the last five years there has been an uptick.

There were 704 felonies, including robberies, on trains and in stations between January through April – an increase of 1.7%, according to NYPD statistics reported to the MTA.

Serious offenses are rare considering the volume of riders, but the mini-spike calls into question whether police can bring down the crime rate much more. “I doubt it can go down dramatically or [get] much lower,” said Eli Silverman, police studies professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “But can they keep it pretty close to where it’s been? I think they can.”

Silverman raises an interesting idea: At some point, due to the magnitude of the subway system and limitations of a personnel-based police force, the MTA and the NYPD won’t be able to continue lowering the subway crime rate. In fact, it’s quite possible that we’re at that nadir; unless different surveillance and prevention measures are put into place, subway crime won’t get lower.

Perhaps adding cameras to subway cars or stations could force the crime rate a few ticks lower. Perhaps increased police presence — Operation Torch? — will deter a few more potential criminals.

But either way, the MTA and NYPD have done a stellar job in turning the subways around over the last few decades from a crime-infested disaster to a vast public transit system about as safe as one could hope. As long as crime stays low, we’ll all come out ahead.

Get ready to smile for your MTA overlords. Over a year after the MTA first started grumbling about putting security cameras in subway cars, the security plan may get off the ground sometime this year. Or maybe next year. No one really knows yet.

What we do know is that the MTA will begin one of their pilot programs that will see suveillance cameras in subway cars. This program isn’t about terrorism; it’s about subway security and vandalism, plain and simple. New York 1 has more:

An initiative to put surveillance cameras onboard subway cars took another small step forward Monday as the MTA announced a pilot program to install cameras on two subway cars.

The prototype cars will be the new R160 model, now in service on the L, N, J, M and Z lines.

Transit officials say there is no timetable in place yet, but that the pilot could be underway late this year or early next.

A similar pilot is already underway on buses. About half the Manhattan bus fleet has been outfitted with cameras as part of a $5 million pilot program, which officials say has been successful in combating vandalism.

Now, that’s quite the pilot program. Installing cameras in two subway cars should have the same deterrent effect as asking shouting an empty car while its alarm is going off for 50 minutes in a row. But joking aside, it’s about time.

At first, when the MTA announced their desires for security cameras in the subway, I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea on privacy grounds. Did we really want someone spying on us at all hours of the day as we ride the subways?

But as more and more officials spoke about the need for cameras, I warmed up to the idea. As it is, the city is awash in surveillance cameras, and placing cameras on the subways should make potential perps think twice about the crimes they may commit. Hopefully, cameras would cut back on subway vandalism and incidents of harassment on trains simply by their virtue of existence.

Civil libertarians concerned with privacy have reason to object, but I feel the good of the cameras far outweighs the bad. And besides, no one is going to track down hours of worthless tape for the sake of spying. The videos instead should be used as a review mechanism for crimes committed.

It is of course a bit dismaying that this pilot program won’t get off the ground for months and that it will encompass few cars. In Washington, D.C, and London, the Metro and the Underground have long been outfitted with cameras. While we could argue long and hard about the successes and failures of the cameras in those two cities, the fact that the surveillance programs even exist should be enough for the MTA to roll out more than a two-car test run. As is it, this is an idea long past due.

New York City’s tenuous race relations are back in the news in a big way. In a three-piece special investigative feature, the Daily News on Sunday unveiled the alarming fact that the city’s black and Latino subway riders are far more likely to be stopped by the police than whites and Asians in the subways.

Tina Moore, Benjamin Lesser and Greg B. Smith have the story:

The NYPD is far more likely to stop and question black and Latino subway riders than white commuters – particularly in Manhattan, a Daily News investigation has found.

Blacks and Hispanics make up 49% of subway riders, yet account for nearly 90% of the citizens stopped and questioned in the subways in the last two years. Whites make up 35.5% of subway ridership, yet they account for a mere 7.9% of the subway riders stopped in the last two years, records show.

This racial disparity occurs across the city, particularly in NYPD Transit Districts that serve mostly white neighborhoods of Manhattan, including Wall Street, SoHo, Tribeca, the West Village, the upper West and East Sides, and midtown. Unlike in the rest of the city, the NYPD’s practice of stopping subway riders grew dramatically through last year – even as the crime rate has plummeted.

As the Daily News notes, this data is alarming because the high frisk rates don’t correspond to a related drop in crime. In 2004, there were just 7.6 stop-and-frisks per day to go along with the 9 subway crimes per day. In 2005, frisks spiked to 32.3 while crimes went down to 8.5 per day. In 2006 and 2007, frisks were at 74.3 and 74.2, respectively, while crimes dipped from 7 per day to 6.

“The million dollar question is, if the city is safe with half this enforcement, why are we doing more enforcement?” Eugene O’Donnell, an ex-cop who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said. “If the subways are safe with “X” level of enforcement, then why go with enforcement that goes beyond that?”

The NYPD meanwhile defending their practice. “Subway crime is down, in part, because of stops. Officers make stops based on reasonable suspicion, and the numbers reflect the times, places and circumstances where those observations take place,” Paul Browne, department spokesperson, said.

More alarming, however, are the way cops are seemingly flaunting the rules. In two companion pieces, Tina Moore explores how the cops often tell those they stop that the police are free to stop anyone any time and how cops usually don’t tell people why they are stopped. The corresponding map shows who gets stopped where. As expected, areas New Yorkers generally consider to be more “white” see higher proportions of non-white stopped.

Right now, response to this story has been muted. The New York Civil Liberties Union noted that this data simply confirms what many of us already knew about race relations and police stops in the subway. Cops are still targeting minorities at a disproportionate rate whether the need to do so exists or not. How the city’s various leaders respond to this over the next few days will be telling.

Graphic from the New York Daily News.

Coming soon to the subway: Police officers with automatic rifles and submachine guns in your subway car. And bomb-sniffing dogs. And Kevlar-helmets. Oh, my.

Thanks to an influx of Homeland Security funds, New York City and the MTA are beefing up subway security. While I can’t complain about the money or the focus on the soft underbelly of our city’s security, I have to wonder if they’re going about it the right way. Al Baker, writing over the weekend in The New York Times, has more:

In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city’s subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday.

Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Officials said the operation would begin in March.

Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will come from a pool of up to $30 million taken from $153.2 million in new federal transit grants to the state.

New Yorkers riding the subway each day tend to forget that the subways are a very viable target and that they aren’t really secure. Various security projects are falling months behind schedule, and New York City’s transit infrastructure has long been stiffed by Homeland Security.

But armed officers patrolling trains cars? Is this designed to root out terrorists or keep rowdy riders in check? I would have to believe that this money is better spent securing tunnels, rail yards and other access points. We need strategic counterterrorism measures and not just for-show displays of arms. Hopefully, the remaining $120 million will be used in a more sensible matter.

Meanwhile, a few months ago, I noted that the subways were getting 1.5¢ per person of federal money for security while the airlines were raking in $7 per person. With this 56-percent increase, does that mean we’re now at a whopping 2.25¢ per person?

“New York remains at the top of the terrorist target list, and mass transit remains a concern because it has been targeted many times around the world,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. I feel safer already.

Apparently, the MTA anti-terrorism tip line doesn’t yield too many leads. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.

In a rather amusing piece in Monday’s Times, William Neuman crunches some numbers and runs some anecdotes to find that no terrorist activity was reported but New Yorkers sure are paranoid. And, oh yeah, friends like to try to pull practical jokes on each other by reporting them as potential terrorists. Hardy har har.

Here’s what Neuman had to say:

Now, an overview of police data relating to calls to the hot line over the past two years reveals the answer and provides a unique snapshot of post-9/11 New York, part paranoia and part well-founded caution. Indeed, no terrorists were arrested, but a wide spectrum of other activity was reported.

The vast majority of calls had nothing to do with the transit system. Some callers tried to turn the authority’s slogan on its head. These people saw nothing but said something anyway — calling in phony bomb threats or terror tips. At least five people were arrested in the past two years and charged with making false reports. Eleven calls were about people seen counting in the subway, which was interpreted as ominous by some.

Those 11 calls mostly concerned Muslims counting prayer beads in the subway. At least our politics of racial profile and fear of Muslims is working!

More specifically, the numbers don’t quite add up. The MTA has claimed that 1944 people saw and said something. Police data but that figure closer to 109 in 2006 and 45 through early December 2007. That’s quite the difference, but, hey, we know how good the MTA is with counting.

The calls that were successful, according to Neuman, were related more to criminal activity rather than terrorist threats. One guy was arrested after the drunkenly called in a phony bomb threat against Penn Station and other calls to the anti-terrorist tipline that weren’t transit related resulted in a few fake ID busts, a firearms cache discovery and an illegal fireworks arrest.

I won’t dismiss outright the idea that the New York City subways aren’t an insecure terrorist target. They are indeed both insecure and a terrorist target, but with this information out, I have to wonder if it would be a better use of resources to seal the security holes instead of driving home paranoia with constant reminders about seeing things and saying things. In the end, people tend to envision threats that they don’t really see.

But then again, without this program, where would we be without this great story? Neuman writes:

A Brooklyn jeweler, Rimon Alkatri, was convicted last month of making a false report and faces up to seven years in prison. Mr. Browne said that in May 2006, Mr. Alkatri told a hot line operator that terrorists were planning a subway bomb attack. But Mr. Alkatri was charged with falsely reporting an incident and accused of making up the story to get back at some former business associates.

You gotta love disgruntled former business partners.