Tighter security is the norm post-911 New York
Source: Agencies |
December 6, 2010, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
NOT far from the New York Stock Exchange, tourists stopped to watch as a bomb-sniffing dog checked out a delivery van. The cobblestone street was blocked by a line of brass cubes with holes that glowed red like the inside of a toaster.
Suddenly an entire section of the street rotated, cobblestones and all. The cubes moved out of the van's way and their holes turned green. The crowd "ahhed" with surprise.
Welcome to New York, a city where every year since the September 11, 2001 attacks, tighter security has changed the landscape a little bit at a time, more noticeable to the tourists crowding the streets for the holidays than the residents who have been here all along.
"There are so many police," said Jackie Carey, 71, of Wilmington, Delaware, as she looked over Rockefeller Plaza crowds from the steps of St Patrick's Cathedral. "There's like about five policemen on the corner.''
At Radio City Music Hall, guards check holiday tourists' purses for weapons before the Rockettes' Christmas Spectacular. In Herald Square near Macy's department store, cameras stare down at shoppers.
In rail stations, travelers are bombarded with messages warning them to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. There are poison-gas sensors and radiation detectors, automatic license plate readers and random bag searches in the subways.
The Woolworth Building, a 1913 skyscraper that used to attract hundreds of tourists a day to its ornate lobby, now has a sign at the door saying "Tourists Are Not Permitted Beyond This Point."
Visitors to the Statue of Liberty must go through two separate, airport-style security checkpoints. Taking pictures of the PATH trains that run under the Hudson River to New Jersey is illegal. Even the city's architecture is changing: closed "sky lobbies" are replacing ground-level public spaces; vehicle barriers are de rigueur.
At Rockefeller Plaza, concrete barriers emblazoned with "NYPD" blocked part of the streets running through the promenade, which draws visitors to see its Christmas tree and ice skating rink.
In the subways, train conductors tell passengers, "If you see something, say something." So do posters and ticket machines. Police conduct occasional spot checks, setting up a table in stations and searching travelers' bags at random.
Times Square sports wider sidewalks aimed at creating buffer zones around high-profile buildings. Nearly every lamppost has at least two domed cameras and an antenna for beaming live images to police.
"Cameras, cameras and more cameras," said Robert Jacobs, 30, from Chicago. "Makes you wonder who's got time to watch it all."
Computers, that's who. In a command center that opened in 2008, software searches constantly for suspicious activity, such as an object that does not move for a long time. The computers can also search for specific shapes and colors, such as a suspect wearing a green jacket. In September, police added 500 more cameras to the system.
Suddenly an entire section of the street rotated, cobblestones and all. The cubes moved out of the van's way and their holes turned green. The crowd "ahhed" with surprise.
Welcome to New York, a city where every year since the September 11, 2001 attacks, tighter security has changed the landscape a little bit at a time, more noticeable to the tourists crowding the streets for the holidays than the residents who have been here all along.
"There are so many police," said Jackie Carey, 71, of Wilmington, Delaware, as she looked over Rockefeller Plaza crowds from the steps of St Patrick's Cathedral. "There's like about five policemen on the corner.''
At Radio City Music Hall, guards check holiday tourists' purses for weapons before the Rockettes' Christmas Spectacular. In Herald Square near Macy's department store, cameras stare down at shoppers.
In rail stations, travelers are bombarded with messages warning them to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. There are poison-gas sensors and radiation detectors, automatic license plate readers and random bag searches in the subways.
The Woolworth Building, a 1913 skyscraper that used to attract hundreds of tourists a day to its ornate lobby, now has a sign at the door saying "Tourists Are Not Permitted Beyond This Point."
Visitors to the Statue of Liberty must go through two separate, airport-style security checkpoints. Taking pictures of the PATH trains that run under the Hudson River to New Jersey is illegal. Even the city's architecture is changing: closed "sky lobbies" are replacing ground-level public spaces; vehicle barriers are de rigueur.
At Rockefeller Plaza, concrete barriers emblazoned with "NYPD" blocked part of the streets running through the promenade, which draws visitors to see its Christmas tree and ice skating rink.
In the subways, train conductors tell passengers, "If you see something, say something." So do posters and ticket machines. Police conduct occasional spot checks, setting up a table in stations and searching travelers' bags at random.
Times Square sports wider sidewalks aimed at creating buffer zones around high-profile buildings. Nearly every lamppost has at least two domed cameras and an antenna for beaming live images to police.
"Cameras, cameras and more cameras," said Robert Jacobs, 30, from Chicago. "Makes you wonder who's got time to watch it all."
Computers, that's who. In a command center that opened in 2008, software searches constantly for suspicious activity, such as an object that does not move for a long time. The computers can also search for specific shapes and colors, such as a suspect wearing a green jacket. In September, police added 500 more cameras to the system.
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