NYPD Checking Trucks for Radioactive Material

The New York City Police Department has stepped up truck inspections to protect against any radioactive, biological or chemical bombs entering the city, the New York Post reported.

Enlisting an array of new detection tools, the NYPD, along with federal and state investigators, have launched a two-pronged assault against would-be terrorists trying to get bomb-making materials into the city, the paper reported Tuesday.

About 40 police officers using radiation detectors stopped about 50 trucks on Sunday in an effort to gauge if there were traces of radioactive isotopes that could indicate a “dirty bomb,” the Post said.

They were also looking for other potential explosive ingredients, such as hydrogen peroxide or chlorine, which are favored by al Qaeda, the paper reported.

Inspectors thought they intercepted a radioactive threat a week earlier in Manhattan, just days after last week’s foiled terror plot against Kennedy Airport’s aviation fuel system, the Post said, but the truck’s high reading turned out to be isotopes in the soot of an industrial vacuum.