(CBS) — It was stunning for those who watched Thursday night as federal agents investigated a possible nuclear threat at Chicago’s Ogilvie Transportation Center.
CBS 2′s photojournalist Lana Hinshaw-Klann happened to be at the scene and used a cell-phone camera to record agents in action. Reporter Dave Savini looks into what agents were looking for and what they found.
Sources say the agents were members of the elite TSA VIPR team on the 5:04pm Union Pacific West line. They were carrying hand-held nuclear-detection devices that picked up a reading.
blah blah blah snipped
Jerry Jones, a Chicago lawyer, was heading home on that train. He says the federal officers narrowed the trouble to the area where he was sitting.
“I had no idea I was the center of the activity,” he says.
The special security team must have picked up on him as he entered the station and walked up the stairs, Jones says. Little did he know a nuclear stress test he had at a hospital earlier in the day had set off silent alarms and sent security scurrying.
One commenter named Doug had a very succinct comment on the story:
So if I understand this all correctly this guy was the first person in 9 years to get on a train at the transportation center after having a nuke stress test downtown?
Hmmmm.
And an “Elite” VIPR team?
Elite compared to what? This guy, perhaps?
(Washington Post) – A Transportation Security Administration screener at Miami International Airport was arrested this week for allegedly beating up a co-worker after months of jokes about the size of the screener’s genitalia that colleagues observed during training with full-body scanning machines.
The agency has suspended Rolando Negrin, 44, after his arrest Tuesday night after beating a co-worker who had made the jokes. The AP reported that Negrin reportedly told police he “could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind.”
Or maybe this elite TSA agent that was arrested for child molestation… Maybe he was just practicing his enhanced “pat down” techniques.
(Daily Mail) – A TSA employee was arrested for allegedly raping the young boy that he mentored through Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Paul Magnuson, who recently worked as a transportation security inspector for the TSA and was returning to America after working on a job in Frankfurt, Germany, was arrested in the international airport in Newark, New Jersey.
Magnuson has not been formally charged with the rape of the boy, whose name will not be released due to his age and the nature of the crime.
Meanwhile, while the “elite” TSA VIPR team waits in its lair to spring into action to locate those who have had a nuclear stress test with their “POLICE” emblazoned vests, people are getting savaged by violent predators all throughout the city.
2 dead, 11 injured in weekend violence
CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) – One man was beaten to death at a CTA station, a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot and eleven other people were wounded in separate acts of violence across the city this weekend.
Police said the 37-year-old beating victim died from injuries suffered in a fight with another man on the platform of the 43rd Street CTA Green Line station on the South Side, about 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
A friend of mine pointed something out that made some sense about why this could happen.
This type of “mistake” is meant to condition the masses to the presence of paramilitary units operating under the guise of “police”.
Got posse comitatus?
This whole thing wreaks of conditioning, more than genuine concern for the safety of the people riding the Metra. It does provide a small bit of peace of mind in that if a briefcase nuke made it into the station that they might pick up on it… but I’m not holding my breath either.