Truckers to pitch in on terrorism fight
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Robert St. John has spotted drunken drivers and other potential road hazards while driving his New Jersey truck route. Now, he’s willing to look for terrorists.
On Thursday, St. John will join a fledgling national program that turns truck drivers into eyes and ears on the lookout for signs of terrorist activity. When they spot something suspicious, drivers call a nationwide center, which then relays the information to the appropriate law-enforcement agency.
“You’ve got nearly 3 million truck drivers throughout the country – 6 million eyes running up and down not only interstate highways, but other roads throughout the communities,” said St. John, who drives for Delanco, N.J.-based Jevic Transportation Inc. “If we’re trained properly on what to look for and how to make that call on what we’re observing, we can possibly deter something from happening.”
Known as “Highway Watch,” the program is to begin Thursday in Pennsylvania with the first two-hour training session for about 50 selected drivers at the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association in Camp Hill. The drivers will then go back to their companies and train other drivers.
St. John said he is attending the Pennsylvania course because he also drives in the Keystone State and has participated in Pennsylvania safety programs in the past. His home state of New Jersey is not yet participating in the program.
In addition to being taught to look out for the standard highway safety threats, the drivers will be taught to discern the more unusual sign of terrorist activity.
They include indications that a person may be “rehearsing” a terrorist act to be carried out later, said John Willard, a spokesman for the American Trucking Associations, responsible for the program under a grant from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Pennsylvania will be the 13th state to join in the program.
The effort started out as a safety-training program but expanded to include counterterrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
“Post 9-11, we realized this program could have some national security implications,” Willard said.
Drivers who complete the program are given a special identification number and the toll-free number to the program’s call center in Kansas.
There, an operator stands ready to take down a report of a suspicious vehicle or person and relay it to the appropriate state agency.
As many as 400 drivers per month are being trained in the program, which started in Colorado.
“I know they can make a difference,” said Jeff Beatty, a security consultant for the program. “I know of incidents already in the trucking industry where there have been arrests of suspects because they exhibited suspicious behavior.”
Citing the need not to tip off potential terrorists, Beatty declined to go into detail about the types of activities for which drivers will be trained to look.
While Highway Watch alone is not an answer to the nation’s terrorism problem, it can be an effective deterrent when used in conjunction with other efforts, Beatty said.
“This program gives us so many percentage points advantage that it’s really worth doing,” he said.
The program also operates in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia.