Don't know whether to feel safer that boats and ships coming into the Port of Long Beach are being screened for radiation or alarmed because I had not known it was a threat.
Large container ships are already scanned as part of a separate screening process, but the new “Maritime Chokepoint Operation” targets tubs under 300 tons, including fishing boats and recreational vessels, according to port officials.
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Such vessels can be scanned for radiation while they are moving, so the new ops will not slow things down at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which is also utilizing the new technology.
Maritime Chokepoint Operation funding comes from a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, and includes the participation of the Long Beach Police Department, the sheriff's departments of Orange and Los Angeles counties, the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, the National Guard and the Transportation Security Administration.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.