Special teams aid in transit security
By Carol Eisenberg - Newsday
Wednesday, July 4, 2007 10:02 AM PDT
WASHINGTON — They are called VIPER teams —small groups of U.S. air marshals, bomb detection specialists, transportation inspectors and behavioral experts.
Their mission is to parachute into cities on a moment’s notice to act as a visible deterrent against terrorists at airports and other transit hubs.
And they arrived in New York on Tuesday to work side by side with city police and other agencies, overseeing metropolitan-area transit centers during the July Fourth holiday. An unspecified number were patrolling aviation and transit points, as well as in several other cities, including Washington, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, said TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe. The teams’ exact locations are not given out, nor are their numbers or the amount of time they will spend in a place, she said.
“I can tell you that this is not anything new,” said Howe, adding that the deployment had been planned before the unexploded bombs in London because of the millions of people expected to attend Independence Day celebrations.
“Over the last 18 months, we’ve had 84 VIPER team operations,” she said. The modus operandi of the teams, overseen by the Transportation Security Administration, is to be nimble, fast-moving and unpredictable — to deter potential terrorists who might be casing a location. Most wear uniforms and carry firearms, though a few dress in plain clothes.
VIPER stands for ``Visible Intermodal Protection and Response'' teams.
``The stuff we're doing this week is stuff we do every day,'' Howe said. ``You just may be seeing more of it. We usually do the Super Bowl. We did (the late President) Ford's funeral in D.C. So it's not unusual to deploy them at a time like this when a lot of people will be using public transit systems.''
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