NYPD post 9/11

metman

NYPD transformed since Sept. 11 attacks

Nearly seven years after terrorists took down the World Trade Center's twin towers, police officials have embarked on an ambitious plan to secure the new development that is finally sprouting at ground zero.

But a repeat of the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001 is only one of a long list of worries that have prompted the New York Police Department to spend the last several years reinventing itself as an intelligence and homeland security agency.

The nation's largest police department, with about 37,000 officers, has spent tens of millions of dollars - much it from federal grants - on an array of high-tech security measures designed to thwart threats potentially more daunting than another attack on a downtown skyscraper. It's also assigned 1,000 officers to counterterrorism duty, including 10 detectives posted around the globe who collect and share intelligence.

Overall, it's an effort unmatched by any other city in the nation, and perhaps the world.

"We've made major changes in this organization since Sept. 11," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a recent interview. "I think they're working. But it's still very much a work in progress."

David Cohen - a former CIA official brought aboard after Sept. 11 to head the NYPD's intelligence division - said the department has identified more than a dozen serious plots against the city in the past seven years that were either interrupted or abandoned, including some that haven't become public.

Among those that have come to light: a planned cyanide attack on the subways by al-Qaida operatives that authorities say was called off in 2002; another aborted al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003; a local scheme to blow up the subway station at Herald Square in 2004, resulting in the arrest and conviction of a Pakistani immigrant; and a plot to bomb underwater train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan, which was broken up in 2006 by several arrests overseas.

For terrorists, attacking New York City "is marbled into their thought process," Cohen said. "If you want to get into the major leagues in the terrorism business, you come here."

Cohen and Richard Falkenrath, the department's counterterrorism chief, drive home that point in daily briefings with Kelly.

On one recent morning in the commissioner's 14th floor conference room, the pair told him that in the past 24 hours, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen had come forward to warn that his roommates in the Bronx wanted to attack the subway, that there had been multiple bomb threats against the U.S. Open tennis tournament and that an anonymous caller in Italy had told the CIA, "I put a bomb in New York."

Falkenrath said the Bronx case, like the others, was a false alarm: Investigators believe it may have stemmed from a dispute over money.

"It doesn't look like it's going to turn into a terrorism case," Falkenrath, a security expert who served in the White House until joining the NYPD, told Kelly.

Cohen also informed the commissioner that two NYPD detectives sent to Kosovo and Montenegro to gauge the threat of Islamic extremism in the Balkan region would be coming back with "a lot of valuable information."

The briefings are derived in part from classified information shared by federal law enforcement. But there also are reports from the NYPD's own team of analysts who have studied the rise of homegrown terror cells, and dispatches from investigators posted in Madrid, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Montreal, Toronto, Lyon, France, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Amman, Jordan. Alerts also come from a separate team of investigators, most foreign-born and fluent in languages like Arabic and Farsi, who comb jihadist Web sites for signs of trouble.

The post-Sept. 11 endeavors so far haven't unearthed any "immediate threats against ground zero," Kelly said. "But we are very much concerned about that location as projects there go forward."

The NYPD is so concerned that it's spending $90 million to secure the trade center site, Wall Street and other parts of lower Manhattan using a series of checkpoints and 3,000 closed-circuit cameras monitored by officers at a command center. It was modeled in part after the "ring of steel" surveillance measures in London's financial district.

Also in the works is a project to use license-plate readers, radiation detectors and cameras installed at 16 bridges and four tunnels to screen every car, truck or other vehicle entering Manhattan for radioactive materials and other terrorism threats. About a million vehicles drive onto the island everyday.

The vehicle data - license plate numbers, radiological readings and photos - would be automatically analyzed by computers programmed with information about suspicious vehicles. Police say the system could help them intercept would-be attackers before they can do harm.

The department has coordinated with police forces in New Jersey, Long Island and towns north of the city to expand the line of defense against terrorists transporting a dirty bomb or - most frightening of all - a nuclear device.

"If we're so unfortunate that terrorists actually acquire these weapons, this is by far the most likely place they'll seek to use them," Falkenrath said.

With the city certain to remain a prime target for terror, the police department can't let down its guard, Kelly said.

"We can put in a lot of measures, a lot of procedures and brag about what we're doing," he said. "But preventing another attack - that's the ultimate standard. So far, so good."

Source

Check out an NYPD 'Surge' here, most impressive. When the Yanks do something, they don't do it half-assed.

TheNog

WOW that is some amount of technology and manpower but I have one question: How sustainable is it all? Where will all these millions of dollars come from seeing that the US is experiencing a recession like everyone else.

metman

How sustainable is the US budget when it comes to Homeland Security? I think its a safe bet that there'll be money in the kitty for CT stuff for some time to come.

JonAnderton

Yeah...Always money for CT... Besides, I wouldn't fancy being the bloke refusing money for it...

metman

In fact if you look at the new payscales that NYPD have introduced, you'd be earning over 90,000 dollars with 5.5 years in as an Officer (Garda/PC), thats about 45k sterling :eek: Check it out here.

There's a good reason for New York's crime rate having fallen so significantly; the City respects and rewards its Police. It must make it one of the best, if not the best, paying department in the world.

JonAnderton

Looking at that Jihad class, I'm curious... What input do recruits now have at training school into the subject of Terrorism? I'm sure thats not a bunch of new recruits, but why not?

metman

Jon I believe this is part of the introductory package in CT now.

JonAnderton

lol.. whats the cordon distances for an F16 AMRAAM Missile?

Victor

Of course the NYPD got screwed over in 2003 because so many officers who were also in the National Guard got called up. The city was paying the difference between soldier pay rates and police officer pay rates to soldiers on deployment in Iraq and paying overtime to those picking up the pieces in NY.

eroo

metman wrote: »

In fact if you look at the new payscales that NYPD have introduced, you'd be earning over 90,000 dollars with 5.5 years in as an Officer (Garda/PC), thats about 45k sterling :eek: Check it out here.

There's a good reason for New York's crime rate having fallen so significantly; the City respects and rewards its Police. It must make it one of the best, if not the best, paying department in the world.

+1

I was in New York in 2005.EVERY street corner had a cop on it.Literally.Also,at least 2 cop cars would drive by every minute or so.Hell,I once saw at least 12 NYPD cars drive by in the space of 5 mins.They were not the same ones going round and round either!I actually think some of them were bored because crime is at an all time low.That zero tolerance scheme really cleaned NY up.

Victor

eroo wrote: »

I was in New York in 2005.EVERY street corner had a cop on it.Literally.

You exaggerate. It takes about 5 officers to fill one position allowing for time off, weekends, holidays, training, etc. Thats an average of 7,400 on duty at any time (obviously the more people around, the more officers).

Manhattan is on average 12 avenues by 145 streets = 6,960 street corners. Now add the other boroughs and all the other duties required.

"In New York City, the average size of a north-south block is 1/20th of a mile, or 264 feet. An east-west block is about 1/5th of a mile, so 1,056 feet." - all of Temple Bar is the size of two city blocks in Manhattan.