Gestapo teams, originally confined to airports and then rail stations after September 11, 2001, are increasingly engaged in mission creep. In Virginia Beach this week, drivers on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel witnessed the police state in action armed TSA VIPER teams with bomb-sniffing dogs checking for al-Qaeda, or so they tell the public.
The operation began early Tuesday and lasted through the afternoon. As many as 60 people with TSA, the tunnel police, Coast Guard, NCIS, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, Norfolk and Virginia Beach Police ran a security checkpoint on both ends of the span.
In 2005, VIPER teams began to patrol Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, LA rail lines, ferries in Washington state, bus stations in Houston, mass transit systems in ATL, Philly, DC and Baltimore.
