Thursday, 4:30 PM
Romney orders bag searches on MBTA
By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff
Random searches of MBTA riders' bags will resume for the first time since the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gov. Mitt Romney announced this morning.
Police will use equipment that allows them to swab bags for explosive material without opening them and to do so in less than a minute. With probable cause, officers can ask passengers to open bags and packages.
The searches could begin as soon as next week.
Romney said he did not order the move in response to a specific terrorist threat, though subway systems were targeted in London, Madrid, and Mumbai in recent years.
"Terrorism is not a traditional criminal activity," the governor said in a statement. "We are fighting a war against people who have as their objective the overthrow of the United States government. Given that kind of threat, we have to adjust our homeland security strategies to confront it."
Romney said the more immediate trigger was a federal appeals court ruling in August that random bag searches on New York subways are constitutional, saying that the police tactic is an effective and minimally invasive way to help protect a prime terror target. Those searches began after the London bombings in July 2005. Civil liberties groups sued to block the searches, arguing the searches were an intrusion on privacy that terrorists could easily evade.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was the first subway system in the nation to begin random inspections of bags and packages when it instituted them for the 2004 convention, the first national political convention after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In addition to the random inspections, Romney said that the MBTA Transit Police will deploy "impact teams," trained in anti-terrorism and behavioral recognition techniques, to increase police visibility.
