New vehicle and container mobile scanner in Portland

New vehicle and container mobile scanner in Portland    A group of nine U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, comprising Portland’s Anti-Terrorism & Contraband Enforcement Team, has begun training on a new vehicle and container inspection system.
   The port of Portland said that the scanning machine arrived at the port’s terminal 6 on Sept. 20.
   The mobile scanning machine uses gamma-ray technology to detect anomalies in the contents of ocean shipping containers. It is the first such device to be deployed in Portland, the port said.
   In a bulletin, the port of Portland reported Customs and Border Protection inspector Dick Teela as saying that the vehicle and container inspection system serves as both a deterrent to contraband shippers and would-be terrorists. It helps officers better determine if a targeted container should be inspected more closely.
   “If a vehicle and container inspection system scan doesn’t register anything unusual inside a targeted container, we may not need to physically open and inspect it further,” said Teela.
   Teela noted that inspection officers will be able to scan about 60 containers in an eight-hour shift. Although the actual scan time is only about 15 seconds, he said it takes several minutes to select a container, bring it to the machine, scan the contents and record the analysis.