https://abcnews.go.com/US/dea-agent-killed-officers-hurt-shooting-aboard-amtrak/story?id=80397780
Is this customary for police to screen “in transit” Amtrak trains for illegal weapons, money, and drugs? First I’ve ever heard of it.
I don’t know. That being said, I would expect the authorities had ‘actionable intellegence’ in making their move. The element of surprise is generally an advantage in such confrontations. Beyond that I know squat.
I have similar suspicions. It’s just the generic way the story mentions illegal money, weapons, or drugs…made me wonder if something more “routine” might have been at work.
Could be that a fellow passenger might have spotted the weapon, and reported it?
Don’t know about Amtrak but DEA and/or PA State Drug task force have often checked the Greyhound buses when they are taking rest breaks along the interstates. They used dogs to sniff the luggage. They had a lot of success with it in my county for quite awhile at the rest stop that all the NYC buses then used both heading east & west on I-80. Then about 10 years ago the rest stop was switched to 60 miles west and I don’t know what is currently happening.
A federal agent died and two other law enforcement officers were injured in a shooting on an Amtrak train at a station Monday morning in Tucson, Arizona.
Members of a regional narcotics “alliance” of local and federal authorities were conducting a routine check on a stationary train when a man opened fire, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said Monday. Authorities were detaining another man on the train’s upper deck when the shooter pulled out a handgun, he said. “The suspect, after exchanging rounds with the officers, barricaded himself in the bathroom, which is on the lower level. … Ultimately it was determined that the suspect in the bathroom was, in fact, deceased,” Magnus said.
Yes, it is customary. Particulary along the southwest border
Police and DEA Searches Aboard Amtrak Trains - The Atlantic
Don’t bring weed on Amtrak : Amtrak (reddit.com)
I’m afraid we’re going to need TSA airport style screening on our trains. As I’ve been pointing out for years, to any fundamentalist with a knowledge of the fundamentals, our trains’ vulnerabilities are glaringly obvious. Hey, how do you patrol over 100,000 route miles? (Drones might help) Worse than dynamiting a passenger train, imagine the sabotage of a freight carrying toxic chemicals in an urban area. All you need is a pound of C4, a detonator and a pressure switch or radio frequency remote
[quote user=“BEAUSABRE”]
Convicted One
Is this customary for police to screen “in transit” Amtrak trains for illegal weapons, money, and drugs?
Yes, it is customary. Particulary along the southwest border
I agree that there will be a push to add TSA-style screening for passenger trains in the short-term. However, the logistics are a nightmare and I am not sure they are actually solvable. The volume of people at rush hour (pre-COVID at least) at Grand Central or Penn Stations in NYC would probably ground the city to a halt if there was TSA screening to get into those stations. Then there is the challenge of covering 500 Amtrak stations, with the great majority just platforms in small towns all over the country, with only a daily set of trains for most of them.
But I could be wrong, the Feds might still try to go forward with a screening program for all passenger service.
In all the years I travelled Amtrak Toledo, Ohio to Washington DC, admittedly only once or twice a year, I saw TSA presence only once. In the Toledo waiting room maybe an hour before the train, a TSA agent in full camo fatigues, weapon on hip, strolled in, walked up to the ticket counter and chatted a moment with the Amtrak folks, turned and looked around, and walked out.
You saw them only once probably because the Capitol Limited doesn’t get as close to the Canadian Border as the Lake Shore Limited does.
For a number of years the station at Depew, NY (Buffalo) resembled a place under seige. Groups of men in uniform, sometimes camo, carrying large and menacing automatic weapons would not only patrol the station precincts but board the train and ride, usually east to Rochester. They never bothered me or the others in our roomettes or bedrooms, but coach passengers had to endure being awakened after 11 PM by the car lights being turned on and people being asked “Where were you born?” and so on. I never saw anyone taken off the train nor read of it.
On my last round trip in May I not only saw no TSA or uniformed men at Depew, they were completely absent from the Moynihan Train Hall in New York. One may draw one’s own conclusions as to why.
External video of the train during the shootout with very good sound - I think I counted ten rounds, maybe more
Video: Routine search ends in dramatic shootout at Amtrak station (msn.com)
DEA agents had found bulk marijuana on Amtrak train before the deadly shooting in Arizona, court documents say
The deadly shooting on an Amtrak train in Arizona on Monday erupted after US Drug Enforcement Administration agents recovered large amounts of marijuana on board, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
DEA Special Agent Group Supervisor Michael G. Garbo was killed in the shooting while another special agent was in critical condition, and a Tucson police
Given the fact that cannabis substances are legal in many states (sold in licensed stores for ordinary use) the continued DEA campaign to intercept and arrest seems absurd.
Ahh? Recreational alcohol is legal in most places, but if you manufacture and distribute without greasing the right palms, the enforcers come a knocking. So I doubt MJ will be any different.
My guess it will be several more years before the federal ban is eliminated, Once AB-InBev, Seagrams, etc. are ready to dominate that industry, then the tide of lobbying will turn the opposite direction and the remaining prohibitions will evaporate.
Amtrak train is Federal property, so state laws do NOT apply. See my earlier posting for someone’s experience with the DEA after getting busted with a small amount of weed.
Second, it’s not DEA’s choice, the law is the law and their job is to enforce it. And
-
Intent to distribute is a different kettle of fish from a reefer or two
-
They’re not just after marijuana but harder stuff like Heroin and Meth as well. This bust just happened to be the former not the later.
And yeah, I bet the tobacco and alcohol companies have the ad campaigns ready to roll out when given the word
That is the noteworthy thing here, The quantity involved was not inconsequential, and the facts they were carrying guns as well, suggests that these guys were more than just refugees from Woodstock.
Surprised we haven’t heard the usual bellyaching about police excess, and how possessing a little weed is not a capital offense? [:-^]
I’m glad that the threat in this story was neutralized without harm to bystanders. It is a little un-nerving to contemplate as an innocent law abiding citizen the potential for being exposed to “police state” type scrutiny just for wanting to use mass transit. “Olt mann, vhere are your papers”? etc
I doubt that the people some posters saw carrying guns and wearing camo were TSA. TSA isn’t law enforcement. You probably saw DEA or CBP agents.
Choices are made about what laws to seek to enforce in organizized campaigns. The synthetic opioids, pushed by Big Pharma killed thousands, far more than cannabis. . That should be a target for convictions, but it won’t.
Give it time. This is likely to go the same way as the tobacco litigation: many false starts before the boom is brought down, much slush paid to the Burton, Marstellers… but in the end, justice and consent-decree controls.
On the other hand, watch the opioid problem collapse if any of the research programs into non-opioid analgesia produce salable non-generics… [:-^]
The Sackler family of Purdue Pharma seems to have gotten off relatively scot free.