Moving to protect New York City from attacks like the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, the New York Police Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are teaming up on a counterterrorism initiative to strengthen the city’s defenses on commuter trains, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told The New York Sun.

The move comes as the threat of terrorism has been refreshed in the minds of New Yorkers with the announced dissolution on Saturday of a terrorist plan to blow up pipelines carrying jet fuel to John F. Kennedy International Airport. With attempted terrorist plots such as the bombing of Herald Square before the 2004 Republican National Convention and last month’s terrorist scheme to kill army officers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and the recent indictments of city residents Uzair Paracha and Tariq Shah for attempting to aid Al Qaeda operatives, several public officials, including Rep. Peter King and Rep. Vito Fossella, renewed their calls yesterday for increased anti-terror funding.

While it is unclear exactly how much funding the New York City Police Department spends on counterterrorism, the department is leading a $30 million program funded by the Department of Homeland Security to create a 50-mile perimeter barring nuclear weapons from the city, investigating the importation of chlorine, which can be used in the manufacturing of deadly bombs, and deploying a counterterrorism unit into the streets and the subways of the city every day.

Adding to the department’s counterterrorism efforts, officers from the city’s police department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are now performing a counter-terrorism reconnaissance program, known as “total order maintenance sweeps,” or TOMS, at Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road commuter stations. The sweeps, where a patrol of officers inspects each train car on every train that pulls into a commuter station, are being implemented randomly across the city.

“Attacks in London against the mass transit system there demonstrated how planning and bomb assembly took place outside of London,” Mr. Kelly said. “The Madrid commuter rail bombings showed how commuter trains approaching the central city were also targeted. NYPD presence on Metro-North and LIRR trains is just one more element in widening counterterrorism coverage and cooperation among neighboring jurisdictions and agencies.”

The TOMS program, which the NYPD implemented in the subways shortly after September 11, 2001, and first introduced to commuter trains last month, is designed to pre-empt a terrorist attack on a train through active police inspection while also discouraging would-be terrorists by displaying a sizable police presence in train stations, a commanding officer in the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit, Inspector Joseph Campbell, said.

“The inspection gets everyone’s attention,” Inspector Campbell said. “The visibility is important. It keeps the public informed and fights complacency.”

The senior fellow for counterterrorism at the Manhattan Institute, R.P. Eddy, said expanding the TOMS program to commuter trains is an important step in the police department’s ongoing fight to prevent another terrorist attack. A shrewd terrorist plotting an attack on the city would likely hatch a scheme outside the NYPD’s jurisdiction, where police departments are less versed in counterterrorism tactics and intelligence gathering, he said.

Officers taking part in the TOMS program are trained to make eye contact with every passenger, looking for anyone who may appear startled by the police presence, as well as scan for unattended packages, Inspector Campbell said.

The counterterrorism partnership between the NYPD and the MTA is a progressive initiative because of the traditional difficulties in securing commuter trains, which connect separate jurisdictions that are often policed by several different law enforcement agencies, Mr. Eddy said.

“There is always the question of who should do the enforcement, and by far the best cops we have on trains are the NYPD,” Mr. Eddy said.
The joint initiative is also another step forward in Mr. Kelly’s plan to integrate communication between the NYPD and other law enforcement departments in the fight against terrorism.

“We have been working closely with neighboring police departments and agencies for the last five and a half years,” Mr. Kelly said. “The application of total order maintenance sweeps on suburban commuter trains as they enter the city is just the latest manifestation of that cooperation.”