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T says something: You're going to see something tomorrow
By adamg on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 12:02pm
The MBTA informs us of a renewed push on its "See something, say something" campaign tomorrow morning:
At dozens of stations around the nation's fifth busiest public transportation system, MBTA Transit Police will be joined by bus, subway, and Commuter Rail personnel in talking with customers and distributing tens of thousands of the MBTA's Transit Watch pamphlets that encourage people to report:
An unaccompanied bag or package in a remote area
Any passengers behaving oddly
A group operating in an orchestrated or rehearsed manner
Suspicious odors, fluids, or other substancesAt Back Bay Station, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas, Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan will hand out the pamphlets to commuters.
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Comments
Now more than ever...
They should just put those lovely announcements on a loop. They're not played enough.
That's my least-favorite announcement
Now, more than ever? Really?
Does the MBTA know something we don't? Why is it more important to report something today than on 9/12/01?
When you say "Now, more than ever", what you mean is "I need to start writing this sentence, so I'll put some thingies."
Any passengers behaving
Sure that will not be hard to spot
I will be on the smell out for pinesole
Oh man
If I called the See/Smell Something, Say Something number every time the Red Line car had a suspicious odor, or someone'd left suspicious fluids in or under a seat (this includes spilled Dunkin Donuts cups) we'd never get anywhere. The trains would be halted for hours while hazmat teams came in.
Either that or they'd just ignore it in their own fashion.
"Yes, well, this train smells like a cross between maple syrup and dirty diapers. Clearly a terrorist plot. I mean, I like maple syrup and all, but this is noxious. Hey! Don't you remember what happened in Japan? No, I will NOT bring a can of air freshener with me on the T!"
This: MBTA Transit Police
This:
sounds like this:
Report them!
LOL
Nice.
ha
That's hilarious.
I'll make sure to wear my lite-brite costume tomorrow.
Once again
How is it that they trust my eyes and ears enough to notice suspicious persons, but not enough to know when an Orange Line train is pulling into a station?
If you report them, will anyone care?
I was in JFK a couple of weeks ago and noticed a 50ish man taking pictures of airplanes. Seemed like he was being a little sly with the camera so watched him for a few minutes from a distance and got my suspicions up when he started taking pictures of the baggage handlers. Probably nothing but struck me as a little odd so I reported it to TSA, described him height, build, clothing, camera etc. About 15 minutes later two TSA officials came by chatting although the man with the camera was long gone - that was the closest anyone came to checking up on this. In the end I saw him again much later traveling with two matronly women and figured he was just a fan of planes or something. If this had happened in September 2001, they would have probably strip-searched the guy. Personally, I'd be happy if somebody at least had the diligence to come right over and ask him a couple of questions and let him on his way. How soon we forget!
This is a good idea
I've seen people who I'm pretty sure were completely oblivious to things that should have raised red flags. A little awareness-raising can help.
I also hope that the MBTA will handle "suspicious persons" with the utmost delicacy. There will always be alarmists, busybodies, and the biased. A report of something a random person thinks is "suspicious" is not grounds for pulling someone else off a train or embarrassing them.
Shortly after 9/11, I saw a very nervous-looking skinny Arab-looking guy in olive drab fatigues with a stereotypical muslim beard, carrying a large, battered cardboard box... waiting in Central for the Red Line. I hesitated to report it, because I'd been hearing news reports of people being interrogated or even disappearing on the flimsiest of suspicion, and I didn't want to be part of doing that to someone. So I just got in the same car as him, positioned myself where I could try to tackle him if need be, and kept aware of him in my peripheral vision. He later got off the train without incident. With the benefit of hindsight, and had I confidence that authorities would handle it delicately, I probably would "say something."
Neil, don't be a hero.
Don't be offended, but what you did was stupid. If you know anything about explosives, or have ever seen a bomb go off, you'd know that you don't want to be anywhere near someone who might have one on them. Leave it to the trained professionals. Transit systems are a main target of terrorists and, because of this, the Transit Police are very highly trained when it comes to explosives and/or terrorism.
I wasn't
I was just trying to communicate with example, how overreactions in the past can lead to people being reluctant to report things that maybe they should.
Again, this goes back to trust. Some trust has been regained, but then we go and do things like unconstitutional searches, as recently as last week.
Neil..."handle it delicately"? "Overreaction"??
When it comes to saving lives the people in charge of your safety don't shouldn't think about being "delicate," and they should react aggressively and with every tool at their disposal. Do me a favor, find someone who comes from Israel and try to "communicate" your argument to them and see how they feel about your bleeding liberal thoughts.
Disagreed on every point
Or perhaps we're not talking about the same thing.
For example, right after 9/11 (the time of the incident, as I said), we were doing things like secret detainments on a large scale, with no justifiable cause.
If your family members were snatched up, nobody would tell you whether they were alive or dead, whether they were being held, or whether they would be returned to you... Would you simply salute and get all misty-eyed from your own overwhelming Patriotism? Or would you be worried sick over your missing family, and shocked when you heard that maybe they were snatched up by some government agency, though nobody will answer you?
Now, would you volunteer your neighbors' families for the same treatment?
I don't think we're doing that any more, but that context was fresh in my mind in the moment that I decided to follow the guy rather than go look for a phone or T personnel.
I'll say it again: it's about trust. And trust is further damaged by the continuing presence of people who irrationally suggest that *any* measure is justified when it comes to *X*. It's pretty easy to get them to disprove their own assertion by their own values, but then they tend to persist in reasoning predicated on the disproven assertion anyway. This irrationality scares people who understand, for example, that the goal of "safety" does not mean outlawing cars because cars cause huge numbers of deaths. We have many competing goals and values, and our solutions are highly complex.
Nervous-looking?
Maybe he was nervous-looking because everybody kept giving him the hairy eyeball. If everybody kept staring at me and shitting their pants, I'd start feeling nervous too.
If you see something
If you see something... It's too late !
You won't see anything on the Weekends
Well, at least you won't have to worry about seeing something on a commuter rail train on a weekend that you should say something about.
I'm just waiting for some dolt to make the argument that by cutting back on public transit frequencies, we limit the number of potential targets.
Hey, I Just Thought Of Something!
By cutting back on public transit frequencies, we limit the number of potential targets!
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Don't be fooled!
If you limit the number of potential targets and there's still the same threat level (ORANGE!!!!!), then the individual probability of attack on each target is greater!
Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Ah, Yes, You're Right!
We should therefore mandate that everybody take public transportation, and at least six times a day per person, therefore minimizing the risk of any individual trip becoming a terrorist target!
Whew! I'm glad we worked this out. I was getting worried.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Cutting back on service
Is helping the terrorists, because it will concentrate more people on a single
targettrain, emworsifying the resultalant destructification.Thankage!
You just embiggened my vocabularic potential thricefold!
Just be careful: verbing weirds language...
;)
Thanks, Suldog
You did it to a T, except for the being a dolt part.
As I starting thinking about this little PR offensive, I started to wonder: with all the pent up frustration with the T's service, I wonder how long the Mayor and Grabauskas will last down there?
Seriously, most people who read UH are pretty well informed, and know that the Mayor doesn't run the T. I suspect the crowd at BBY will not be quite so well informed, and Hizzoner might get quite a bit more than he bargained for. I think there is a decent chance that this security awareness campaign might turn into a security incident response when people start hurling expletives and perhaps(hopefully not) other things. After all, someone was able to get a shoe off at W.
I would say that Grabauskas is toast, but for the fact that his face is far less well-known than Menino's. Conley will have a State Police detail, so he's not concerned.
Don't worry.
The Transit Watch people are sure to bring along their sandwich-sniffing dogs. Everything will be safe.
Ah
And they'll know Grabauskas is toast better than anybody.
Yes
"A group operating in an orchestrated or rehearsed manner"
Why yes at the symphony stop there is this group of folks in the building right above the stop!
Thank goodness someone else recognized the dangers of symphony orchestras, marching bands and dance troops!
Orchestrated and rehearsed manners in a train station.
Like this?
Orchestrated and Rehearsed
... and not moving
Honk!
As the Sunday Harvard Square part of the Honk! festival broke up last October, some of the musicians got on a Red Line train and rode it back to Davis, performing all of the way. I don't know if that's available on video anywhere, but I'd love to see more such things happen on the T.
Service disruptions?
Won't this have serious implications on service due to all of these workers being taken away from performing their primary essential duties??
how much
do tens of thousands of pamphlets cost, anyway?
GREAT
Great! Maybe T passangers can also 'report' rediculously inadequate service, late trains or trains that just don't show up at all, and the inhospitible way that T personnel close the doors in your face as you're racing to catch the train home.
all the time
I see troubling things all the time... mbta cops swabbing people's bags (sure makes *me* suspicious... and not of the other passengers); trains just "standing by" at stations; passengers obliviously playing games on their phones with the sound turned up; folks shoving on before letting other passengers off; MBTA police cars in general (since it's allegedly easier and faster to take the T). One time I saw a kid solve a rubik's cube in like 2 minutes, which I'm pretty sure is a sign of end times. :)
See a Fare Evader, Say Something
So I saw the T's minions out there distributing the see something say something brochures this morning. My question is simple. If the T has the manpower to have these people distributing pamphlets at a ton of stops (I saw them at Reservoir, B Village, and Gov't Ctr - and those were places where they were on the platform), why don't they have the manpower to at least mitigate the rampant fare evasion that is still in full swing on the Green Line?
I think someone audibly snickered at me this morning for using the automated validation machine on the platform.
Low-hanging fruit, and not mutually exclusive
I haven't seen the brochures, but assuming that they're well done, a one-time (or occasional) distributing of them to raise citizen awareness seems good and worthwhile to me.
I further suspect that the fare evasion problem requires a lot more expense to make a comparable dent in. I don't imagine the safety/security awareness-raising as significantly distracting from that.
what a waste of paper.
what a waste of paper. these pamphlets were tossed on the ground throughout the stations and on the trains.