LONG ISLAND CITY — The NYPD is looking to take a bit out of terrorism, with a new dog training facility on Northern Boulevard.
The state-of-the-art facility, which will house the dogs as well as provide training facilities, is taking aim at threats against the city’s mass transit system, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Wednesday.
“We have had 14 plots against New York City since Sept. 11, and five of them were aimed at our transit system, the second busiest in the world,” Kelly said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the facility, near 39th Avenue. “Five million [people] a day use the system.”
“The dogs that we have now…are a tremendous aid in helping us not [only] in suppressing crimes but also to act as an important tool to address the issue of terrorists,” he said.
Kelly said the team of crime-fighting dogs includes two vapor wake dogs, which can sniff and trace on-the-move explosives in a crowd. Normal sniffing dogs can only detect stationary explosive and need to get really close to the substance, Kelly said.
Vapor wake dogs need a special training facility, Kelly said, to develop and hone this ability.
“This facility here enables us to train them, to house them and to clean and take care of them medically in one state-of-the-art location,” he said.
