On Friday, August 5, almost a month after the deadly tube and bus bombings in London, someone left a green suitcase on the el platform at North and Damen. An officer at the scene radioed in a request for a supervisor and described the unattended piece of luggage, answering the dispatcher’s specific questions.
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The big deal, according to this cop, a combat veteran, was that the officer clearly had been looking at the suitcase while describing it; if the suitcase had contained a bomb, he says, the officer at the scene and everything around him could have been blown to smithereens: “When you’re standing near an explosive, a radio transmission can produce an electrical current that could set off the blasting cap.”
Since 2003 Chicago has received more than $65 million in federal funding through the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative to address “equipment, training, planning, and exercise needs.” According to Monique Bond, spokesperson for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, about $22 million has gone to the city’s first responders–$12.7 million to the fire department and $9.7 million to the police department. The remainder went to OEMC for initiatives that focus on “mitigation and prevention of attacks.”
