Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that the drop in Homeland Security funding means a "cessation of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative" - aka the "Ring of Steel" for the Financial District. A few months ago, the NYPD proposed an ambitious plan to install license plate readers and vehicle barriers downtown to tighten up security, modeled after what London did after its early 1990s bombings. Commissioner Kelly testified at the City Council and listed 17 terrorist events on why the city needs the the most federal terror funding - it starts at the 1990 assassination of Jewish Defense Lague leader Meir Kahane by El Sayed A Nosair and ends with the recent London arrest of Syed Hashmi, with mention of the two different World Trade Center Attacks and various foiled plots against the city. The city now has to determine how to fund all the different projects, while politicians and business leaders lobby the Department of Homeland Security over more funding and the right for NYC to decide how the money is spent.

Kelly also stressed that Iran's spying program was "aggressive" and that "they are not going to other cities to do it. They are doing it here in New York."