Heightened Alert for LAPD, Deputies After London Blasts

Los Angeles police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were placed on heightened alert at area transit facilities minutes after Thursday’s explosions in London.

Sheriff Lee Baca and LAPD Chief William J. Bratton deployed extra officers, some accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs, as commuter trains and buses began rolling at dawn.

Patrols had already been beefed up since the more destructive explosions in London on July 7.

At Union Station and other Metropolitan Transportation Authority stops Thursday, teams of as many as six or eight officers roved platforms and trains. No schedule disruptions were reported.

Thursday’s explosions on three London subway trains and a double-decker bus, which inflicted minimal damage and injury, were taken as seriously by Los Angeles area law enforcement as the earlier blasts, in which more than 50 people died.

“We didn’t expect London, two weeks later, to be attacked again,” Baca said. “It’s equally alarming. The difference between a murder and a wounded person is a bad shot. The difference between a deadly terrorist attack and one that’s not is a bad shot.”

Authorities emphasized that there was no known threat targeting the Los Angeles area.

City Council President Alex Padilla -- standing in for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was in Washington seeking more anti-terrorism funding -- urged the public to “keep this in the proper context” by continuing routine activities.

“But remain extra vigilant and extra cautious,” he said during a media briefing at the county Emergency Operations Center in East Los Angeles.

When word came of the new attacks, the center was still staffed and running as a result of an alert called after the first London attacks.

“We never stopped,” said Capt. Eric Parra, who oversees the sheriff’s emergency operations.

Bratton was in Chicago on Thursday, attending a law enforcement anti-terrorism meeting. He was notified of the London attacks “about two minutes after they happened,” said Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell. Bratton immediately joined Baca in ordering the heightened alert.

The sheriff said the key to preventing terrorist acts was increased intelligence gathering, including reports by the public about suspicious activity, and “more networking” by police officials.

Capt. Dan Finkelstein, head of the sheriff’s subway security forces, returned Thursday from a networking trip to London and said he had learned a good deal from British authorities about dealing with terrorist violence.

“They have a tremendous amount of experience,” Finkelstein said after landing at Los Angeles International Airport. “We’re behind them.”

The captain said he was especially impressed by the British use of closed-circuit television systems to monitor transit facilities. Television cameras reportedly captured several of the suspects in the July 7 bombings.

“I don’t need more people, I don’t need more guns,” Finkelstein said. “What we need is to enhance our technology, and that was already underway before London.”

Times staff writers Ammara Durrani and Eric Malnic contributed to this report.