New York City is planning to expand a counter-terrorism surveillance system deployed in Lower Manhattan two years ago to Midtown where a vehicle-borne bomb failed to explode earlier this month and as part of overall security efforts even more video cameras would be welcome, the city’s police commissioner says.
In a press conference following the arrest of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad last Tuesday, Ray Kelly said that the police department would like to a have more cameras in Midtown Manhattan. He also said that the city has a program to migrate its Lower Manhattan Security Initiative to Midtown although the expansion is still awaiting funding.
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative consists of closed circuit televisions owned by the New York Police Dept. and others by its public and private partners, license plate readers, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear detectors that are networked to a security coordination center in Lower Manhattan that opened in Oct. 2008. In addition the integrated security approach includes an increased presence of uniformed officers on the streets.
Following the failed bombing attempt, Morgan Keegan defense and security analyst Brian Ruttenbur issued a note to clients saying that more installations of advanced video surveillance systems are a possibility including those that offer real-time video analytics and analysis. Post-incident analysis of video footage in the area showed Shahzad’s sport utility vehicle entering Times Square but none of him parking and exiting the vehicle.
If there had been video of Shahzad, particularly a reasonably good shot of his face, it may have shortened the time period it took investigators to identify him. In the end, it was straightforward detective work by the NYPD that took advantage of the vehicle identification number on Shahzad’s unexploded Nissan Pathfinder that ultimately led to him being identified as a suspect and put under surveillance by the FBI.
As cities and facilities make more use of video cameras, the best types for improving the ability to identify someone are high definition television cameras that are just beginning to penetrate the market, Fredrik Nilsson, general manager, Americas, for Sweden-based network camera provider Axis Communications tells TR2. He says that of the video he had seen in Times Square that showed potentially suspicious individuals, none appeared to be high-definition.
Of course, video surveillance doesn’t prevent crime but it can quickly help solve a case, Nilsson says.
The failed attack shows once again that New York City is a, if not the, key target for terrorists to attack in the U.S. That federal grant dollars being doled out annually by the Department of Homeland Security for preparedness and response need to be going to these big cities, Thomas Sanderson, deputy director for Transnational Threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells TR2.
“All the high value targets that these guys have said they want to hit, that we know they want to hit again, are the places that should be getting the absolute lion’s share of the funding,” Sanderson says. It’s not just a matter of killing people, these are targets that can hurt a city economically, he says.
Although the FBI had Shahzad under surveillance, they eventually lost him. It wasn’t until he had already boarded a flight on Emirates airline at John F. Kennedy International Airport for Dubai the night of May 3, two days after he left his SUV in Times Square, that Customs and Border Protection officers at the National Targeting Center discovered he was on the plane.
CBP’s discovery that Shahzad was on the plane showed that the process associated with the no-fly list created to prevent suspected terrorists from flying onto planes into, out of and over the U.S. works. Once investigators were confident that Shahzad was the likely terrorist, his name was put on the no-fly list by DHS.
While DHS is in the process of taking over the name matching for the no-fly lists from airlines for passenger manifests on domestic flights, airlines are still currently responsible for doing the name matching on international flights. Prior to the Shahzad incident, the airlines had 24 hours check their flight manifests for special circumstance additions to the no-fly list but a day after his arrest the Transportation Security Administration changed that requirement to two hours.
Morgan Keegan’s Ruttenbur also sees potential for spending on other security measures in the wake of the Times Square bombing attempt. He thinks there could be more use of bomb detection systems such as vehicle inspection equipment and handheld devices.