Photo Courtesy of Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photography Office
Senator Schumer revealed Sunday that the just-released budget crafted by President Donald Trump and his team has quietly cut the VIPR dog teams to 0 from 31.
By Forum Staff
The White House is prepared to swing the budget axe and totally eliminate a city counterterrorism tool—K9 bomb detection teams—which are used across transit hubs like Penn Station, airports and more, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
The K9/cop partners, also known as Visible Intermodal Prevent and Response teams, are often utilized across the city in transit hubs, particularly when threat levels are up. New Yorkers have not only grown used to seeing dogs in places like Penn, airports, ferries, ports and special events, but they welcome their presence.
Schumer revealed Sunday that the just-released budget crafted by President Donald Trump and his team has quietly cut the VIPR dog teams to 0 from 31. The slash appears on page 46 of the spending plan, proposing “to eliminate the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) Teams. The program is duplicative of the efforts of State and local law enforcement agencies and lacks sufficient demonstrable benefits to justify its continuation.”
Schumer said this kind of justification simply means putting the burden on the localities, like the NYPD, explaining how under that current White House budget proposal locals would end up footing the bill if they wanted to sustain the canine teams that save lives and screen for explosives.
Schumer on Sunday announced a new fight to make the case as to why the administration should reverse its decision immediately. New York’s senior senator noted that the K9 teams help ensure national security and allow, for example at airports, TSA agents to more effectively and efficiently screen individuals for explosives. These dogs often play a necessary and critical redundancy to other security measures that screen individuals for explosives or explosive residue.
Schumer also said he has fought this sort of effort before, but never a total and complete cut. One of the president’s previous budget proposals grossly slashed VIPR K9 teams by $43 million or 23 total teams. Schumer led a bipartisan effort via a spending bill to restore those cuts and secured around $59 million to the VIPR initiative, sustaining 31 teams, which is the current cost and count nationally.
Canine teams include a highly trained detection dog and a handler. Visible Intermodal Prevent and Response teams augment the security of any mode of transportation at any location within the United States, Schumer said. VIPR teams may approach people and ask questions, examine bags, search vehicles, conduct searches, and patrol the airport to detect suspicious activity. According to the TSA, the agency allocates K9 teams to specific cities and airports utilizing risk-based criteria that take into account multiple factors, including threat score, number of people with secure access, and passenger throughput.
“This is just pushing the cost from the feds to the city, any city,” Schumer added. “But terror threats are of national concern, and New York, other big cities and transit hubs should not be shouldering the brunt of these security costs.”
