It took less than two hours after the bombing attempts in London's transit system on Thursday for the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to decide to begin random checks of passengers' bags in the city's mass transit system. But he said Friday that his decision had been nearly a year and a half in the making.
Mr. Kelly said he started to focus more closely on the vulnerabilities of the city's transit system in February 2004, after a deadly explosion in the Moscow underground... But Mr. Kelly, who has long thought that searches would be necessary in the transit system, said he realized that the measure might be seen as invasive. The time, he said, wasn't right until Thursday.
"The reality is, you need an event such as London for people to realize this is a procedure put in place for their safety," Mr. Kelly said during an hourlong interview in his office at 1 Police Plaza. "Searches are intrusive. The issue is what the public will accept. You still need an event to get public support."
This is an interesting datapoint. I'll save the cynical commentary.
