Hat tip to LGF:Fringe elements are hoping to spark major disruptions at the Republican National Convention with a series of sneaky tricks - including fooling bomb-sniffing dogs on trains bound for Penn Station, the Daily News has learned. Internet-using anarchists are telling would-be troublemakers to decoy specially trained Labrador retrievers with gunpowder or ammonium nitrate-laced tablets in a bid to halt trains or even spur the evacuation of Madison Square Garden.
| Or if they get enough false alarms, enable a real bomb to make it in. |
Top cops are girding against the attempt to foil strong anti-terrorist strategies aimed at protecting conventiongoers - including President Bush - as well as peaceful protesters during the Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 GOP fete. "Where is the legitimate protest in trying to endanger the public?" an angry ÂÂPolice Commissioner Raymond Kelly told The News. "It is the height of irresponsibility," he added. "These hard-core groups are looking to take us on. ... They have increased their level of sophistication and violence."
| They've been practicing at every WTO summit. |
So in addition to guarding against the most vile, organized and destructive of terrorists, Kelly and company have to combat a shadowy, loose-knit band of traveling troublemakers who spread their guides to disruption over the Internet. The dog decoy ploy is the among most insidious in the fringe groups' bag of tricks - which includes throwing marbles under the hooves of police horses and using slingshots to pelt the animals.
| Welcome to Chicago - 1968. |
| Wonder how PETA feels about endangering the animals? |
"They're trying to use up our resources with false alarms. ... The sensitive dogs would become burned out with too many alerts," said a police source. Preliminary plans call for state and city cops with the dogs and hand-held chemical detection devices to board commuter and subway trains one stop before they reach Penn Station, under the Garden. The trains will be swept for suspicious packages and terror suspects before being allowed to continue into the station - the country's busiest, with about 600,000 passengers on a regular workday. "We're going to make certain there is absolutely no disruption of the train," Kelly said in announcing the procedures on April 28.
Two days later, an Internet posting detailed how to stoke disorder by miscuing the bomb dogs. The posting instructed people to "go to a rifle, pistol or skeet shooting range, spend an hour shooting to saturate clothing with smell of gunpowder, go directly to a New Jersey Transit, LIRR or subway train headed for Penn Station. "Try to have at least two people on a train in different locations, sit or stand near the doors as the train approaches the station, try to get near police and dogs, loiter as long as possible around the dog, try to pet it if possible. "If the dog alerts on your scent, do not leave or resist; the situation will cause a major disruption of the train schedule. ... If there is more than one person on the train that causes a dog to alert, you can bet that the train will not be going anywhere for a long time ... neither will any trains behind it." The message instructs to "Play dumb for as long as possible" before telling the police you unwittingly got the gunpowder on your clothes at a shooting range. "It is important that the police call in all possible resources to investigate the situation. ... With any luck, Madison Square Garden will be evacuated." "Rush hours are ideal, the final night of the convention, very good, too," the posting said.
After being alerted to the gunpowder posting, investigators uncovered Internet mentions of dispersing traces of ammonium nitrate on the trains. Ammonium nitrate is one of the most common farm fertilizers in the world. The dogs are trained to detect the fertilizer because it has been used in major bombings, from the 1993 World Trade Center attack to Oklahoma City to Bali, Indonesia. The NYPD also is preparing for possible "Black Bloc" tactics by small groups of anarchists, in which demonstrators wear black clothing and bandannas over their faces - and wield pipes, bottles and commit acts of vandalism against corporate "enemies" such as the Gap, Starbucks and McDonald's.
| That'll go over well in New York, not! |
| Michael Moore lives on the Upper East Side, in case these guys need an address. |
Cops have been trained to isolate violent individuals among peaceful protesters, and will employ an 1845 law that prohibits people from wearing masks in street gatherings, except for masquerades. The NYPD has sent cops to Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Miami, sites of previous political conventions, and to Boston, which will host the Democratic convention this month, to collect intelligence.
| Although how much intelligence you'll find in Boston is open to question. |
"There is the same hard-core element that we have seen move from city to city where violence has marred protests," another police source said.
| And we keep coddling them, don't we? |
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