For the Rangers' next training event, people tagged with identification markers will be lurking in the woods. Riders will have to spot them and report whom they spotted. At the end of the day, riders will be told how many people they missed. "We make it fun, but it's serious at the same time," says David Poynor, coordinator of the Airport Rangers and Plane Spotters Program.
In the new mindset that has settled in after 9/11, public safety and transportation agencies are looking beyond law enforcement personnel to tackle the job of homeland security. They also are tapping the eyes, ears and local-area expertise of clam diggers, doormen, limo drivers, truckers, boaters, cabbies and security guards.
At Logan International Airport in Boston, which is surrounded on three sides by water, yacht club members and commercial shell fishers are on the lookout for terrorists. Located across a tidal flat from the airport, the yacht club is ideally situated to allow members to take note of any unusual vessels that might be heading for shore with harmful intentions.
Clam diggers have been deputized more formally. After 9/11, commercial shell fishers lost access to their tidal flats near the airport for 14 months. Eventually, the legislature decided to let them resume raking the mud for clams, under strict conditions: They had to go through the same background checks as airport employees. They've been fingerprinted and taken terrorism classes, and they wear lime- colored vests and photo IDs when they're within a 250-yard security zone near the airport. If they notice anything suspicious, they report it by VHF radio or cell phone. "We're probably the best security while we're there," says Chester MacDonald, a local clammer. "We know every nook and cranny. We know everyone by name."
New York City may be too big for that level of intimacy, but some building superintendents and doormen are taking four hours of classroom instruction, developed by the police department, that teaches them to watch for tenants who move in with no furniture, people who hang around outside for extended periods and vehicles with no license plates parked near the building.
In Nevada, the Department of Public Safety has distributed laminated cards to cabbies and limo drivers with details on types of suspicious activities and behaviors, such as overly curious, nervous or cautious people; unusual behavior of drivers or delivery personnel; someone taking photographs or making diagrams of bridges, water or power plants or other high-profile targets.
Nationwide, programs for homeland security assistance that are coordinated by the federal government include America's Waterway Watch, which enlists recreational boaters to help the Coast Guard. Truckers can join Highway Watch and look out for suspicious activity on the highways.
The Airport Rangers program is the only one Poynor knows of that uses civilians on horseback for airport security. The 700 people who may now ride in the area have passed background checks, wear badges and carry cell phones so they can check in with security when they come onto the trails and leave.
Volunteers already have helped police locate a stolen car abandoned in the woods, and they are on the lookout for coyote-dug holes under perimeter fences that might be large enough for people to crawl through. Perhaps the best advice Poynor gives is for the equestrians to be in tune with their animals. "Watch your horse. It will see things you don't."
