[Infowarrior] - In Response to M.T.A. ¹ s Œ Say Something ¹ Ads, a Glimpse of Modern Fears

[Richard Forno]

In Response to M.T.A.¹s ŒSay Something¹ Ads, a Glimpse of Modern Fears
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/nyregion/07see.html?pagewanted=print

After 9/11, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority coined the slogan, ³If
you see something, say something,² and put it on posters encouraging subway
and bus riders to call a police counterterrorism hot line if they
encountered anything suspicious. Then, last July, the authority trumpeted
results on new posters and in television ads: ³Last year, 1,944 New Yorkers
saw something and said something.²

But the new posters, also placed in the commuter railroad trains, left out
two things: What, exactly, did those 1,944 New Yorkers see, and what did
they say? Presumably, no active terror plots were interrupted, or that would
have been announced at the time by the authorities.

Now, an overview of police data relating to calls to the hot line over the
past two years reveals the answer and provides a unique snapshot of
post-9/11 New York, part paranoia and part well-founded caution. Indeed, no
terrorists were arrested, but a wide spectrum of other activity was
reported.

Suspicious people were seen in subway tunnels, subway yards and bus garages.
Some callers saw people suspiciously photographing subway facilities.

The vast majority of calls had nothing to do with the transit system,
including reports of people believed to be selling phony ID cards. Or
stockpiling weapons. Or attempting to buy explosives on the Internet (those
turned out to be fireworks).

Some callers tried to turn the authority¹s slogan on its head. These people
saw nothing but said something anyway ‹ calling in phony bomb threats or
terror tips. At least five people were arrested in the past two years and
charged with making false reports.

Eleven calls were about people seen counting in the subway, a seemingly
innocuous act that was interpreted as ominous by at least some who witnessed
it.

One thing the overview did not clear up: just where did the number 1,944
come from? Police and transit officials could not say exactly.

All together, calls to the hot line, 1-888-NYC-SAFE, have resulted in 18
arrests by the New York police over the past two years; none have turned out
to reveal a direct connection to terrorism.

³It¹s just one small part of the initiative the Police Department has to
capture any information that might prevent another 9/11 or another
catastrophic attack on the city,² said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.

³One call one day may be the one that stops an attempt to destroy the
Brooklyn Bridge.² He said that some cases related to hot line calls were
still being investigated.

It is impossible to tell how many people called the counterterrorism hot
line because of the posters. In all, the hot line received 8,999 calls in
2006, including calls that were transferred from 911 and the 311 help line,
Mr. Browne said. They included a significant number of calls about
suspicious packages, many in the transit system. Most involved backpacks,
briefcases or other items accidentally left behind by their owners. None of
them, Mr. Browne said, were bombs.

There were, however, 816 calls to the hot line in 2006 that were deemed
serious enough to require investigation by the department¹s intelligence
division or its joint terrorism task force with the F.B.I. Mr. Browne said
that 109 of those calls had a connection to the transit system and included
reports of suspicious people in tunnels and yards, and of people taking
pictures of the tracks.

The hot line received many more calls in 2007, possibly because of the
authority¹s advertising campaign, Mr. Browne said. Through early December,
the counterterrorism hot line received 13,473 calls, with 644 of those
meriting investigation. Of that group, 45 calls were transit related.

Then there were the 11 calls about people counting.

Mr. Browne said several callers reported seeing men clicking hand-held
counting devices while riding on subway trains or waiting on platforms.

The callers said that the men appeared to be Muslims and that they seemed to
be counting the number of people boarding subway trains or the number of
trains passing through a station. They feared the men might be collecting
data to maximize the casualties in a terror attack.

³They saw someone clicking this device and gave different interpretations to
that and saw a possible threat,² Mr. Browne said.

But when the police looked into the claims, they determined that the men
were counting prayers with the devices, essentially a modern version of
rosary beads.

The counters are similar to those used by baseball coaches to keep track of
the number of pitches thrown in a game or by stores conducting inventory.
They are a common item in the Islamic shops on Atlantic Avenue in Downtown
Brooklyn, where they sell for $5 to $8.

Ali Mohammed, 44, a Brooklyn grocery owner who was shopping on Atlantic
Avenue recently, said that many Muslims use a tally counter as they repeat
the many names of God.

³Anybody¹s dress, anybody¹s behavior or outlook, it can be suspicious to
anybody,² Mr. Mohammed said. ³But especially if they¹re Muslim, somebody is
going to be suspicious.²

None of those calls led to arrests, but several others did, although they
had nothing to do with the subway or buses. At least three calls resulted in
arrests for trying to sell false identification, including driver¹s licenses
and Social Security cards. One informer told the police about a Staten
Island man who was later found to have a cache of firearms. A Queens man was
charged with having an illegal gun and with unlawful dealing in fireworks.

A Brooklyn man was charged with making anti-Semitic threats against his
landlord and threatening to use sarin gas on him. At least two men arrested
on tips from the hot line were turned over to immigration officials for
deportation, Mr. Browne said.

And then there were the phony tipsters.

A Brooklyn jeweler, Rimon Alkatri, was convicted last month of making a
false report and faces up to seven years in prison. Mr. Browne said that in
May 2006, Mr. Alkatri told a hot line operator that terrorists were planning
a subway bomb attack. But Mr. Alkatri was charged with falsely reporting an
incident and accused of making up the story to get back at some former
business associates.

On Sept. 3, 2007, a man called the police and said there would be an attack
on Pennsylvania Station the next day. The police traced the call, and in
October they arrested a Long Island resident, Yvan Peralta, and charged him
with making a false report, Mr. Browne said. He said Mr. Peralta told the
police he had been drinking when he made the call.

Other apparently phony tipsters included a man who said that Police
Headquarters in Lower Manhattan would be hit with a rocket attack, a man who
said he was going to use plastic explosives to blow up a Queens hospice and
a man who called in a bomb threat against a Pepsi-Cola building in the
Bronx.

The current version of the ³See Something, Say Something² ads began running
in July, said Christopher P. Boylan, a deputy executive director of the
authority. The television and newspaper ads ended late last year, but
posters remain on some trains. The campaign cost $3 million.

But despite the ad¹s specific mention of 1,944 New Yorkers, there was some
mystery surrounding the number.

Mr. Browne and Mr. Boylan said that it included the police hot line calls
that were followed up by counterterrorism investigators and similar calls to
the New York State Police, the F.B.I. and the Port Authority Police
Department.

Mr. Browne, however, provided figures showing that a total of 2,096 terror
tips to the four agencies were investigated in 2006.

Mr. Boylan said he did not know exactly how the authority had come up with
the number. ³I don¹t want to say that the accuracy of the number is
secondary to the message,² Mr. Boylan said, ³but the message that we wanted
to get across is that those calls are, in fact, having an impact.²