With buildings now rapidly rising from the destruc tion at Ground Zero, a few critics are characterizing the New York City Police Department’s plans to protect the World Trade Center site as Draconian. That’s wrong, but a basic point is correct: The NYPD is determined to provide security at the World Trade Center commensurate with the terrorist threat.
I make no apologies for this; it is among my foremost missions as police commissioner.
The initial 2002 site-wide design work for World Trade Center redevelopment satisfied many different architectural and land-use criteria, but failed to take into consideration security countermeasures to address the ongoing terrorist threat. The WTC has been attacked twice before, once to its total devastation, and it remains a prime target of our enemies.
The NYPD therefore began a collaborative effort with the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties to ensure that the Freedom Tower, now called One World Trade Center, would be built to appropriate standards. The NYPD convened a world-class panel, including leading experts in terrorism, bomb-blast effects and structural engineering, to consult on the redesign of the building. This work culminated in the unveiling in June 2005 of the new Freedom Tower design — which will produce the safest and most secure high-rise building in the world.
We then turned our attention to the remaining buildings at the site. In lieu of redesigning Towers 2, 3 and 4 to the same standards as One WTC, the Port Authority in 2006 agreed to adopt a “campus security” approach significantly lowering engineering and construction costs for these buildings.
Over the last three years, the NYPD has worked closely with the PA to develop a security plan that balances the needs of security and accessibility. The PA and the NYPD memorialized our shared goals for security at the site when Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward and I signed the World Trade Center Strategic Security Plan in June 2010.
This plan establishes a coordinated approach to security in which the NYPD, the Port Authority PD and private-security personnel hired by WTC tenants treat the individual buildings and entities at the site as a whole for security purposes.
In fact, the Port Authority has agreed to integrate all of the security technologies deployed throughout the site (including more than 3,000 closed-circuit TV cameras) into the NYPD’s state-of-the art Coordination Center, where they can be monitored 24/7 by police personnel.
Far from a Draconian, fortress-like approach, this security plan is a high-tech street-management system designed to expedite entry for vehicles transporting employees and visitors, ensure efficient truck deliveries and provide for unfettered pedestrian and bicycle access.
The city is undertaking detailed traffic modeling of the effects of the security plan on congestion in Lower Manhattan. The results of this modeling will be presented to the public in the environmental-impact study being commissioned by the NYPD.
Landlords, managing agents and tenants will change over time, but the threat to the World Trade Center will persist, as demonstrated by al Qaeda’s 2006 plot to set off explosives in the PATH tubes and flood the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan. Rather than give way to this threat, the NYPD and the Port Authority are working together to make the World Trade Center the safest work environment in the world.
Now is the time for anyone with alternate ideas for securing the site to present them for consideration.
One lesson we’ve learned since 9/11 is that New York’s economic vitality depends on the NYPD’s ability to provide safe and secure city business districts. The security plan’s detractors, including unnamed real-estate executives cited in published accounts, fail to appreciate this point: In the post-9/11 world, security is not at odds with commerce but, in fact, essential to it.
Raymond W. Kelly is New York City police commissioner.