By Calvin Biesecker
In the wake of last fall’s commando-style terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, officials with the federal government and New York City Police Department said yesterday they quickly sought out lessons learned and have conducted exercises and training to ensure a timely and better coordinated response than that provided by security organizations in India.
Less than two weeks after the attacks in late November 2008, and based in part on information collected on the scene by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, NYPD’s intelligence division had already produced an assessment that was shared with the FBI, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection. The department also did a tactical drill with emergency officers and a tabletop exercise for commanders based on the Mumbai attacks, he said.
The NYPD analysis has also led to the training of more officers in the use of heavy weapons and close quarter battle tactics, Kelly said.
“In Mumbai, the local police were simply outgunned by the terrorists,” Kelly said. “We don’t want that to happen in New York.”
Also in Mumbai local authorities didn’t have a sufficient grasp of the layouts of the terrorists’ targets, Kelly said. Based on this, NYPD emergency unit supervisors have been touring major hotels and landmarks in New York City and developing detailed briefing books and training videos based on these visits, he said.
Kelly also said that given the terrorists in Mumbai coordinated their attacks using cell and satellite phones, NYPD is meeting with communications providers about possible “pinpoint disruption” of these phones during an attack “without the wholesale disruption of communications in the immediate vicinity.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has developed partnerships with federal, state, local, tribal and private sector officials and entities as part of the creation of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), which it then leverages for incident and crisis response, James Snyder, deputy assistant secretary for Infrastructure Protection IP at DHS, told the panel in his prepared remarks.
Snyder said those relationships are sustained regularly through exercises based on various scenarios such as coordinated multiple improvised explosive device attacks. In January a branch of IP conducted a tabletop with commercial facilities subsector of the NIPP that was based on a Mumbai-style attack, he said.
“In the case of Mumbai, IP worked directly with the Commercial Facilities Sector, Banking and Finance Sector, Transportation Sector, and leadership from religious organizations to share relevant information,” Snyder said. “To facilitate information collection, analysis and distribution, IP leveraged the incident management capabilities built into its Incident Management Cell.”
Kelly said that cooperation among NYPD, DHS and the FBI is excellent. His department has daily interaction with both federal departments, Kelly said.