Operation TORCH goes underground

Newsday

NEW YORK — Straphangers in New York now have an extra layer of security — police officers armed with submachine guns and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs.

Five or six teams, made up of six police officers and a dog, will patrol heavily used subway stations and lines as part of Operation TORCH, or Transit Operational Response With Canine and Heavy Weapons.

"We're doing everything that we reasonably can to prevent an attack," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said this week.

This is not the first time subway riders have seen this show of force, but in the past such patrols were in place only on days when there was suspicion that terrorists might strike.

Operation TORCH will be in place every day, paid for by the Department of Homeland Security, which in February announced it was giving the city $151 million to help protect against a terrorist attack.

The NYPD already has similar patrols above ground. The Hercules teams routinely patrol near landmark buildings and in heavily trafficked parts of the city, such as by Wall Street and the Empire State Building.

Copyright 2008 The Deseret News Publishing Co.