Police will start checking NYC bus travelers’ luggage for guns

Police will begin random luggage checks on interstate coach buses coming into the Port Authority in an effort to stop an increasing number of guns coming across state lines, Gothamist has learned.

The effort by the Port Authority Police comes after Mayor Eric Adams suggested the idea in his “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” last month. The searches will be conducted in conjunction with a new Interstate Task Force on Illegal Guns convened by New York Governor Kathy Hochul last month, an agency spokesperson told Gothamist.

The approach raises legal and civil liberties concerns, given the racist history of stop-and-frisk policing, and criminologists aren’t sure that it will be effective. But researchers say at least some guns are transported in small quantities via buses, and the searches could act as a deterrent to traffickers.