Los Angeles to Screen Transit Passengers With Body Scanners
Los Angeles CA Aug 15 2018 Los Angeles’s transit agency said Tuesday that it would become the first in the nation to screen its passengers with body scanners as they enter the public transit system — a bold effort to keep riders safer from terrorism and other evolving threats.
But officials said that riders need not worry that their morning commute would turn into the sort of security nightmare often found at airports or even sporting events. In a statement released Tuesday, transit officials said the portable screening devices they plan to deploy later this year will “quickly and unobtrusively” screen riders without forcing them to line up or stop walking.
“We’re looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass casualty event,” Alex Wiggins, the chief security and law enforcement officer for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. “We’re looking for explosive vests, we’re looking for assault rifles. We’re not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don’t have the ability to inflict mass casualties.”
The devices themselves resemble the sort of black laminate cases that musicians lug around on tour — not upright metal detectors. Dave Sotero, a spokesman for Metro, said the machines, which are on wheels, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet away and can scan more than 2,000 passengers per hour. The units can be pointed in the direction of riders as they come down an escalator or into a station.
“Most people won’t even know they’re being scanned, so there’s no risk of them missing their train service on a daily basis,” he said.
Mr. Sotero said the agency had purchased several of the units for about $100,000 each, but he would not specify exactly how many. He said that the authorities still needed to be trained on how to use the technology.
The county’s metro system has one of the largest riderships in the country, with 93 rail stations alone — and it is set to expand. Mr. Sotero said the new scanning units would be mostly deployed at random stations, but would certainly be used at major transit hubs and in places were large crowds are expected for marches, races and other events.
“There won’t be a deployment pattern that will be predictable,” he said. “They will go where they’re needed.”
The Transportation Security Administration partnered with Metro on the project, helping the transit agency test and vet security technologies. The devices Metro ultimately purchased — made by the company Thruvision — can be placed at locations throughout the Metro system and can identify both metallic and nonmetallic objects such as weapons and explosives, officials said.
The software can detect hidden objects using technology that examines the naturally occurring waves produced by a person’s body. The technology does not emit radiation and will not display a person’s anatomy, officials added.
The T.S.A. tested the Thruvision technology extensively, and has tested body scanners in New York’s Penn Station, Washington’s Union Station and at a New Jersey Transit station, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Sotero said officials had examined scanners that patrons would have to walk through, but had opted against it.
Last year, Metro about doubled the number of law enforcement personnel deployed on the system, Mr. Sotero said.
“This new technology will augment our aggressive safety and security posture and help us proactively deter potential attacks to our system,” Sheila Kuehl, a Los Angeles County supervisor and the chairwoman for Metro’s board, said in a statement.
Last month, a woman was killed after getting off a Bay Area Rapid Transit train at MacArthur Station in Oakland, Calif., the last of three unrelated homicides at area stations that occurred less than a week apart. The killings highlighted concerns about the safety of public transportation, with some questioning whether the station should have had a higher level of security.
In December, an attempted suicide bombing in New York ended when a man detonated a faulty pipe bomb in a corridor connecting the Times Square and Port Authority subway stations during morning commuting hours. The suspect, a 27-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh, was the only person seriously injured, but the blast shook a city that only weeks before had seen eight people killed in a truck attack along a Manhattan bike path, and whose residents’ lives, as Mayor Bill de Blasio said the day of the bombing, “revolve around the subway.”
Still, passengers are far more likely to be victims of personal crime, such as being robbed or groped, than to be the victim of a terrorist attack, said Brian D. Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
A successful security system would help passengers feel safe from those more common crimes without interfering with their commutes, he said.
“If people find they are being pulled aside and they sigh and roll their eyes and are delayed,” he said, it could make people less likely to use the rail system.
Even though officials have said the technology would be unobtrusive, Mr. Taylor questioned whether employees would still have to stop and question people who are flagged as having a suspicious item — possibly for a false alarm.
“Someone has to intervene, stop that person and check out what’s going on,” Mr. Taylor said. “That causes delay and it also causes a sense of invasiveness among the passengers.”
Juan Machado, 29, who uses the Metro rail system frequently to get around Los Angeles, said that although he’s not sure exactly how the new scanning system would work, the idea of being screened concerns him because he is worried that the system will generate false positives.
“Going through T.S.A. at the airport, I think about how many times they pull a bag from the conveyor belt and ask to take a look at it,” he said. “A lot of things might look suspicious when you’re X-raying them from a distance.”
“I think it really depends on how it’s executed,” he continued. “If it causes a lot of delays and problems, and people being harassed by the police, then it’s definitely a negative. But if we don’t even notice it, and they use it in a responsible way, then I think it’s a good thing.”
