NYPD Turns Eye On Thousands Of Trucks Entering The City Everyday

Monday, June 11th 2007, 2:23 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Less than a week after a suspected terrorist plot targeting John F. Kennedy International Airport made headlines, police at an impromptu checkpoint in lower Manhattan were confronted with another, less sensational threat: a grimy, radioactive truck.

``We have a mystery vehicle here,'' Deputy Inspector Hugh O'Rourke observed as his radiation detector crackled with a reading three times above normal.

O'Rourke's suspicions evaporated when officers discovered that the truck carried a bulky industrial vacuum used to clean out boilers. Isotopes from soot _ not from a nuclear ``dirty bomb'' or another illicit source _ caused the high reading.

Though the truck was harmless, the inspection illustrated the New York Police Department's fear that the ragtag armada of delivery and other commercial trucks rumbling through the city each day could be instruments of terror.

Police officials believe the roving checkpoints and array of inspection technology could thwart potential plots, including ones involving fertilizer-based truck bombs like those used in the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

``We've always been concerned about the potential for trucks and other vehicles to be used to convey explosives or other weapons,'' said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. ``We also want to screen against the possibility of sensitive cargos being diverted for use in an attack.''

The NYPD recently put more emphasis on screening shipments of chlorine in response to evidence that it has become a favored ingredient of homemade bombs in Iraq. A recent U.N. report found that at least 10 attacks there involved explosives attached to chlorine canisters.

The department's ``interest in tracking chlorine shipments only heightened after we saw it being combined with IEDs in Iraq,'' said police spokesman Paul Browne.

Chlorine typically is used as a disinfectant or purifier, and as an ingredient in plastics and other products. While routinely transported in liquid form, it can turn into a deadly toxic gas when exposed to air.

Any truck driver transporting chlorine canisters who couldn't produce proper identification and paperwork accounting for their load ``would have some explaining to do,'' O'Rourke said. And without a good explanation, ``The truck gets taken off the road,'' he added.

The screeners also pay close attention to dump and cement trucks because ``they're hulking, they're heavy, they can smash through security check points,'' said Jonathan Duecker, an NYPD counterterrorism official.

The truck inspections are among a series of security measures _ many relying on recent technology _ adopted by the NYPD in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and other more recent scares, such as the alleged homegrown plot to blow up the aviation fuel system at Kennedy Airport.

The 36,000-officer department, the nation's largest, has been developing mobile radiation detectors that can be mounted on cars or bicycles to alert officers to evidence of a dirty bomb, an explosive designed to contaminate areas with radioactive dust and debris. Another version would be worn like a backpack by officers patrolling Yankee Stadium and other venues.

Officers on the streets and in the subways also have begun wearing pager-like radiation detectors on their belts. About 1,000 of the devices have been deployed; another 1,000 have been ordered.

The NYPD's half-dozen helicopters are being fitted with license-plate readers _ already installed in some patrol cars _ for their tours over bridges, power plants and chemical storage facilities.

The department has made safety inspections of trucks for years, looking for worn-out brakes and other defects that could cause accidents. But now when vehicles are diverted into checkpoints, NYPD officers _ sometimes teamed with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration _ subject the vehicles to a separate battery of tests designed to detect bombs and other threats.

Technicians armed with larger, hand-held radiation detectors circle the trucks. Officers also run swabs over the steering wheels, then insert them into another device that reads for traces of bomb-making materials.

``I tell the drivers I'm checking for explosives and they're like, 'Yeah, right,''' Detective Lisa Gomez said while inspecting a delivery truck.

Paul Sheldon, the driver of the truck that caused the momentary radiation alert, said he understood the NYPD's vigilance, especially after news of the Kennedy Airport plot.

``I don't mind,'' he said. ``Anything to help the city.''