Ernest, great article and still completely valid today.

The main problem I see, is the tendency of American security effort to become compartmentalized, where turf issues become more important than cooperation, and a failure to maintain focus on core "security" goals, when distracted by the next political "fad of the week" at Homeland Security, or from grandstanding local pols.

I watched, after Katrina, much of the emphasis go from core security or transit to the "fad" of mass evacuation of our urban centers. This occurred purely from a political fixation, after "Brownie" did such a "heckuva job" in New Orleans, and that idiot governor in Texas ordered much of Houston evacuated, against the advice of the Rangers, for no good reason, except for his ego and the oxycontin he was high on, overturning all of the years of careful hurricane emergency planning and training by the Rangers.

After those two fiascos, I watched millions of taxpayer dollars wasted by Homeland Security running around the country assembling rooms full of cops and transit folks (like me) and wasting our time, to plan for the mass evacuation of Los Angeles, for no apparent reasonable threat that could ever be identified.

Not only can't we mass evacuate 3-10 million people, but where we would send them, how would we feed them, and what happens when we put them all on the road, and they all run out of gas (as happened in Houston)?

It was a good thing that the hurricane missed Houston, and hit Shreveport, as a million people would have been, stuck on the side of the interstate, out of gas, with no shelter, exposed to the hurricane, and the loss of life could have been horrific.

It was my experience from that episode, that there is a good reason that we train for these things, and put trained and disciplined people in charge of these things.

I always find some of the comments on here from those who hate the "jack booted thugs" so interesting, but I kind of like most of the ones I've known and worked with.

I do have questions about the new restrictions at Los Angeles Union Station, restricting access to photograph trains, it was unnecessary, after 9/11, and there were no incidents to justify it. and only Zev's fixation with "fare evasion", not security is the cause of this stupid and unnecessary restriction imposed when MTA took over Union Station.

As Dr. Demming used to like to ask, What are we doing and why are we doing it....?