The State House News Service, covering todays Public Safety Committee hearing, reported the following:
MBTA officers said the agency’s force is severely understaffed, leaving the Commonwealth’s public transportation system vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and said officers had brought inadequately trained dogs on trains to give the impression they were sniffing for bombs. After the 2005 London subway bombings killed more than 50 people, police brought dogs on trains, ostensibly as bomb detectors, who had not been trained for that task, but instead for detecting dead bodies, to assuage public panic over the possibility of subway bombings. “This is what we were doing to make people feel safe,” said Michael Flanagan, legislative liaison for the transit police union, during a Public Safety Committee hearing. “If we did have a Madrid experience . . . we would be running around here like chickens with our heads cut off, just trying to catch up,”
This is incredible!
So if Former Governor Romney is elected President is this the kind of response we can expect from him as Commander and Chief?
I would like to know since Madrid was such a major terrorist event if he was aware of this cheap PR trick?
My OWN opinion – I think it was a dumb stunt, but not supremely dumb. If I were a terrorist, I might be deterred by even the appearance of vigilance. But it is definitely in the Better Than Nothing, But Not By Much category.
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Dan Grabauskas is the person you wish to excoriate.
it appears that the union official was full of hot air. But to your point on the T. The Secretary of Transportation is automatically Chairman of the MBTA Board. The T board structure is set up so that the Governor get a majority in his 1st term. The State pays the T 25% of the States sales tax to keep it afloat.
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In fact, if Governor Romney actually wanted pension reform he could have started with the T. That private pension system can only be changed through a managment(i.e. Romney controlled board) and Labor, the legislature has no authority unlike the state system. Most of the T contracts if not all expired under his term and he could have used his bully pulpit against the 23 years and out pension system. Instead he talked a good game about state employee pensions knowing that he could get away with doing nothing and blaming the legislature. He could have have the guts of Mayor Bloomburg and fought for what he supposedly belived in.