SUPER BOWL
SUPER SECURE
MEETING THE CHALLENGES,
ANTICIPATING THE THREATS
UNPRECEDENTED
SECURITY MEASURES WILL GREET
THE FANS IN ATTENDANCE
FOR THE BIG
GAME WHILE SUPER BOWL BOULEVARD
IN MANHATTAN
IS ALREADY A HARDENED TARGET
TAGS:
SUPER BOWL, METLIFE STADIUM, FOOTBALL BOULEVARD –
TIMES SQUARE TO HERALD SQUARE, NYPD, DHS, NJ
STATE POLICE,
SECURING
ALL SUPER BOWL RELATED SITES, TERRORIST RISKS,
SECURITY
PLANS TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING
(Tuesday January 28, 2014
Herald Square, NYC) Super Bowl XLVIII will
be played Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford just a few miles across
the Hudson River from here but the game itself will be the grand finale of a
week-long celebration of everything NFL.
Since this past Sunday a 13 block swathe of Midtown Manhattan from
Herald Square to Times Square has been transformed in Football Boulevard; a
temporary football oriented theme park that has already attracted thousands of
visitors. While bookies and odds makers
are setting the betting lines, the NYPD is defining and manning the boundaries
of Football Boulevard as well as providing an unprecedented level of security
for this one of a kind event.
In this post 9 -11 - 2001
world any mass gathering, be it a professional football game or a shopping mall,
have become increasingly attractive targets for terrorists to ply their trade.
The most readily available and broadly effective tactical tool in the terrorist
arsenal is simply inducing fear. By nature terrorists must utilize the tactics
of asymmetrical warfare and one of their most effective methods is issuing
threats. They score a victory every time
fear settles into a public’s consciousness and their threats of impending
attack prompt a reaction including the alteration of the flow of events. Yes, every terrorist threat, each byte of
“chatter” the NSA catches in their broad nets must be taken seriously. That is
a fundamental of security today. Osama
bin Laden declared war on America time and time again; in printed manifestos,
in interviews with CNN and CBS and, sadly, no one in our sprawling federal and
military intelligence apparatus took him seriously.
The threat of terrorism is now
firmly implanted in our collective and institutional conscious. As New Yorkers we constantly see billboards
on the streets and in the subways encouraging us to “say something” if we “see
something”. The capabilities of the NYPD
today are exponentially more focused on terrorism and on interdiction than ever
before. Hundreds of men and women in
NYPD labor night and day in specialized Units that did not exist as they are
now on September 11, 2001. “Football
Boulevard” will be blanketed with additional surveillance cameras, uniformed
and plain cloths Officers as well as sophisticated devices that can identify
even the smallest amounts of nuclear material.
Many of the measures being enacted remain classified but there can be no
doubt how vigorous the NYPD will be in this neighborhood from now until the
Super Bowl is over late Sunday night.
UP TO THE CHALLENGE
There is arguably no better
prepared municipal Police Department than the NYPD. The challenges this Super Bowl present are
not unfamiliar to our City or our Police Department. NYPD has decades of experience providing
safety and security for events that take place on the world’s largest
stage. From regular Presidential visits,
to the annual United Nations General Assembly and ever type of high visibility
event, NYPD has developed and enacted a series of contingency plans that have
been carefully crafted, rigorously tested and regularly practiced.
While throngs of visitors have
already visited this oddball Midtown attraction with its 60 foot high toboggan
ramp, NFL sponsored attractions and events; the attention on the actual site of
the big game is also ramping up. Personnel from the local towns around MetLife
Stadium to the New Jersey State Police, FBI, and Department of Homeland
Security comprise just a few the elements that have been assembled from 35
different Law Enforcement Agencies.
But, according to former head
of the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Unit, Ed Hartnett told NBC News
this Super Bowl, “truly defines the word ‘challenge’ when it comes to
security.”
In an interview with NBC News Lt.
Col. Edward Cetnar of the New Jersey State Police commented, “Everything that
we're doing has an air, land and sea concept,” given the unique geography
surrounding the MetLife property. The
East Rutherford stadium property is accessible via a network of rivers, small
waterways and marshlands, or, as Bruce Springsteen has sung, “…The swamps of
Jersey”. There has been a perimeter
fence constructed enclosing a 2.5 mile radius setting the boundaries that will
be patrolled by helicopters with sophisticated visual devices and small boats
from Agencies as diverse as the NYPD Harbor Unit, The NJ State Police Maritime
Division and the United States Coast Guard.
THE “MASS TRANSIT” SUPER BOWL
For those unfamiliar with the
proximity of MetLife Stadium to Midtown Manhattan (which means anyone not from
the NYC Metropolitan Area) New York City is inextricably physically linked to
North Jersey. There are three prominent
crossings of the Hudson River, the waterway separating New York and New Jersey;
The George Washington Bridge, and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. There is a heavily used ferry network
extending from Staten Island to Manhattan as well as those small ships that
traverse the Hudson from New Jersey’s “Gold Coast” from Hudson County
communities including West New York, Weehawken, Hoboken and Jersey City.
The NYC Metro Area boasts one
of the country’s most efficient mass transit systems. The components of this network seamlessly
connect at various nexuses; NYC Subways are easily accessible to the Path
System with subways to and from North Jersey as well as the New Jersey Transit
system itself running trains from Penn Station in Midtown all the way out to
suburban New Jersey. In many ways the
life blood of the Metro Area is the mass transit network. For as densely populated as this small region
is, without mass transportation options, the region would be prone to shut
downs, gridlock, traffic jams of epic proportions and the local economy would
suffer greatly. Actually every
institution from Wall Street to the major media outlets that call this region
home would be susceptible to the logistical nightmares that the Metro region and
its approximately 16 million people who live here.
The participants in the Super
Bowl, the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks have taken up residence this week
in newly constructed swanky hotels in Jersey City. The “Media Day” events yesterday took place
at the Prudential Center in Newark a scant few miles from the game’s
venue.
TAKE A LOOK AT A MAP
The PATH
network linking NYC with northern New Jersey
For some intents and purposes
Hudson and Essex Counties in New Jersey are appendages of New York City. If not for the Hudson River they would
constitute a contiguous landmass home to the most densely packed population in
the United States. What people from
other parts of America be they from the Deep South, Midwest or Southwest is
that the states in the Northeast were parts of the original 13 Colonies; home
to the first waves of ‘huddled masses yearning to be free’. In colonial days the only mode of distance
transportation was the horse and buggy. Our founding fathers exchanged
communiques via lone carriers on horseback and, as a direct result of the
limitations of those days, the Northeast states are small and clustered in a
distinct corner of our country. The
population density of the Northeast Corridor is a direct result of our nation’s
historical birth.
New York City sits in the
center of this most densely populated region.
On any given day the tasks associated with keeping the peace, enforcing
the law, insuring the safety and security of all who live here, work here,
visit here and travel through here is a Herculean effort requiring coordinated
operation between multiple Law Enforcement Agencies. Add into the mix an event the scale and scope
of the Super Bowl and its extravagant list of week-long attractions and
activities based in a chunk of Midtown stretching from Times Square to Herald
Square and the daily tasks become that much more demanding.
THE BOSTON MARATHON: LESSONS LEARNED
We have seen the faces of
terror evolve and mutate since September 11, 2001. Across the world in perpetually troubled “hot
spots” to distant locales that attract American and European tourists’
terrorist have struck at what have previously been designated “soft
targets”. The security of virtually
every United States Embassy where ever it may be is robust. Our foreign embassies and Consulates today
are more akin to fortified military bases than diplomatic outposts where
business is conducted.
We have seen terrorist strikes
soft targets from plush hotels in India and the Philippines, to night clubs in
Beirut and Germany. American Embassies
in 1998 Kenya and Tanzania were hit by the forward guard of what ultimately
became the most feared terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. Since the death of Osama bin Laden Al Qaeda
has become a decentralized collection of terrorist cells operating autonomously
utilizing both well developed and carefully planned tactics to the simple but
deadly use of suicide bombers hitting “targets of opportunity”. The asymmetry of this equation gives a
decidedly lopsided advantage to the terrorists.
The 2013 Boston Marathon
bombing as cold and callous as it was deadly and terrifying illustrated the
inherent asymmetry of the threats we face.
Two young men, for whatever reasons, assembled crude explosive devices
similar to the IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) that were so brutally
effective in Afghanistan and in particular Iraq where insurgents, ragtag
militias and small terrorist cells did battle against the full might and
strength of our Armed Forces with deadly efficacy. The axiom that has come to define the field
of battle, the line of scrimmage if you will, as amorphous and free floating as it is says
that the terrorist only have to be “right” once while we, the Counter-terrorism,
Intelligence and Law Enforcement Community have to be right all the time. This
challenge is a near impossibility. It is
for these reasons that as many variables as there are that can be controlled, in
even a rudimentary manner, are.
Aside from erecting physical
barriers, implementing strict organized crowd control tactics, deploying large
numbers of uniformed and non-uniformed Officers and Agents, relying on blanket
coverage of the various sites by surveillance and closed circuit monitoring, vigilance
is the mantra of the NYPD and all the other Agencies tasked with securing the
Super Bowl and all its far flung related events.
All involved in this enormous
undertaking are hoping that contending with the possibility of blustery winter
weather will be the only threat for the rest of this week and for game day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72FP8p1Cgx4&feature=youtu.be (featured NYPD video)
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/12/10/nypd-super-bowl-security-will-be-high-tech-and-unprecedented/
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