The city’s security “Ring of Steel’’ must be widened, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.
Touring the Police Department’s Lower Manhattan Security Initiative — a center where scores of workers scour constant images from 4,000 cameras around town — Kelly said he wants to “increase significantly’’ the amount of surveillance-video equipment feeding into the site.
“We have roughly 4,000 cameras that are monitored in this center,’’ he said, referring to a surveillance system that also includes images from private security cameras.
“I’d like to see that increase significantly and to other boroughs,’’ he said of the coverage. “We’re mostly focused in Manhattan here.”
The commissioner, accompanied by Mayor Bloomberg to the site at 55 Broadway, said he had “no reason to believe” that the Boston bombers also planned to hit New York City.
But “are we vulnerable here to something similar to what happened in Boston? Absolutely,’’ Kelly said.
“There are no guarantees,’’ he said. “No question about it. What we are trying to do [with the influx of crime-fighting technology] is move the odds in our favor.”
As for the just-uncovered, unrelated plot to derail an Amtrak train from Manhattan to Toronto in Niagara Falls, the commish added:
“This is a plot that sort of is in conformance with the other plots that we’ve seen here and other parts of the country. So [it’s] mostly not a particular surprise to us.
“Our position is that the threat [of terrorism] continues and is consistent, and it hasn’t diminished in any significant way …. That’s why we have the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative,” he said.
Kelly didn’t say how more cameras he’d like to add or exactly where.
Many of the current gizmos are trained on such potential terror hot spots as the new World Trade Center, Federal Reserve and Stock Exchange, as well as Midtown tourist areas.
“I think if we’ve learned anything from 9/11, from Boston and from terrorist activities around the world, [it’s that] you can never let your guard down,’’ Bloomberg said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has objected to the cameras as an obvious Big Brother infringement, but Bloomberg said, “People were worried about privacy, and, yes, it is a concern.
“But I think,
given the balance you have to have between keeping people safe and total privacy, the direction the whole world is going is more cameras and better-quality cameras.”