Police ‘Winding Down’ Extra Security Presence as Period of Terror Threat Passes

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The Police Department said yesterday it would withdraw the additional officers that were deployed in the transit system after the announcement last Thursday that a terror plot centered on the city’s subways had been uncovered.


“Since the period of the threat now seems to be passing, I think over the immediate future we’ll slowly be winding down the enhanced security,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. “But we stay at level orange in this city; we have since 9/11. We’re going to take every single threat that has any chance of being credible seriously and do exactly what we did.”


Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that “things were moving in the right direction” and that authorities were “going to slowly reduce our coverage to what it was pre-October 6.”


National Guard troops were seen leaving their posts at Penn Station yesterday afternoon and the additional Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amtrak officers were expected to be relieved of their duties by the end of the day yesterday, a source told The New York Sun. While the reasons the subway system was not struck were not clear, the source speculated that terrorists may have simply been testing the city’s reaction to such a threat.


Patrick Garvey, the chairman of the Cavalry Security Group, a company specializing in military supplies and security assessment, said there is no indication that terrorists were administering a test. Yet Mr. Garvey, a retired Marine Corps reserve general, noted that terrorists “run diversions. They run tests.”


Acting on tips about terrorism plots is difficult because the information is “always fragmentary,” he said. “You never get a nice, neat package.” The next potential terror target, Mr. Garvey said, could be the hotel sector, especially in New York City. “I think the evidence is strong that if you look at the patterns … these guys will go after the places who have the soft targets.”


Even if the subway terror plot proves to be a farce, the police commissioner and the mayor know that “in the end the buck stops here,” and New Yorkers will hold the Bloomberg administration accountable for what happens to the city, Mr. Garvey said. “You can’t take a chance. If it turns out you’re overreacting, fine.”


Senator Schumer made a similar remark Sunday at a press conference he held criticizing the reduction in security funding for the city’s transit system. “In a post-9/11 world,” the senator said, “you can’t be too careful.”


The credibility of the terror tip has been the subject of debate since the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation passed on information about a possible threat to the city’s subway system. The mayor, the police commissioner, and an FBI official went public with the information last Thursday after the arrest of three suspects in Iraq. “Our mass transit system is a potential terrorist target,” Mr. Bloomberg said at that press conference. “This is the first time that we have had a threat with this level of specificity.”


In response, the city increased security, flooding the transit system with more officers and stepped up bag searches with particular focus on briefcases, baby strollers, and luggage. The MTA boosted manned and canine patrols on subway and commuter rail lines.


The FBI said that evidence of an attack did not surface. “No information was uncovered that allowed us to substantiate the threat information,” a spokesman for the FBI, Stephen Kodak, said. “The steps that were taken overseas, however, might have neutralized any threat that may or may not have existed.”


The Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer, set his sights on the future in the wake of the security scaleback. “Now that we are no longer on high alert,” he said, “it is appropriate for the mayor to tell us what he knew about the threat, when, and why he chose to act in the way he did. And it is more critical than ever that we focus on what we as a city must do in the future to keep our transit system secure – better coordination with the federal government, securing and using funding appropriately, moving to install much needed cutting-edge security systems, and providing counter-terrorism training for our first line of defense: the MTA personnel who work underground.”


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