Vol. 72/No. 9      March 3, 2008

The heavily armed cops and dogs are part of “Operation Torch.” The cops will board trains and patrol platforms focusing on heavy-traffic subway stops like Pennsylvania Station, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Each team will include a bomb-sniffing dog and six cops: a dog handler, a sergeant, and four officers from the Emergency Service Unit. The police officers will be outfitted in heavy bullet-proof vests and Kevlar helmets and will carry either M4 automatic rifles or MP5 submachine guns.

Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, and New York governor Elliot Spitzer announced the funding at a February 1 news conference where Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced plans for “Operation Torch.”

“This is great news for New York,” said New York Senator Hillary Clinton, a leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. president, in a February 1 statement.

Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in New York’s 10th Congressional District, denounced the plan in a February 8 speech. “This is a further militarization of society,” he said. “The ruling class wants us to get used to the presence of the armed forces and heavily armed cops on the streets and subways. This is an attack on the rights and political space of the working class.”

In 2005, the NYC cops began random searches of subway riders’ backpacks and bags, a practice that continues to this day.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. Senate approves spy bill
Gov’t retries Liberty City 7 on ‘terror’ charges
Pentagon seeks military trials for six ‘enemy combatants’  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home