Police Commissioner Ray Kelly proudly showed off the city's $200 million "Ring of Steel" surveillance technology to reporters yesterday inside the intimidating downtown Operation Command Center. Kelly, who seems to have serious mayoral aspirations, was effervescent in his praise for the program, which he says has helped cops arrest approximately 100 criminals in the subways in the past eight months alone. And as far as he's concerned, they're just getting started. more ›

500 new surveillance cameras went live yesterday inside the Times Square, Penn Station and Grand Central subway station, and 500 more are on the way. At a press conference yesterday at the Minority Reportish Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly unveiled the new surveillance system, which provides real-time video images to the command center, and can analyze thousands of images to find a particular item. "If we're looking for a person in a red jacket, we can call up all the red jackets filmed in the last 30 days," Kelly told reporters. "We're beginning to use software that can identify suspicious objects or behaviors." (Note to terrorists: red jackets are not a good look for you.) more ›

Bloomberg has been looking to increase the city's camera surveillance in the wake of the Times Square bomb scare, and headed to London yesterday to check out their famous "Ring of Steel" system of over 500,000 cameras. He met with City of London Police Commissioner Mike Bowron, toured the tube with Mayor Boris Johnson, and was done in time for tea. Bloomberg said, "I am here to learn from others, see what works best, and try to fix things before they become a problem." So what did he learn? more ›

The NYPD is using at least $24 million of federal money to expand the "Ring of Steel" surveillance network to midtown. But would it have caught the SUV bomb that was parked on 45th Street in Times Square on Saturday? Yes and no, say those with familiarity with the high-tech plans. more ›

The city will expand the downtown surveillance network commonly referred to as the "Ring of Steel" to midtown, using $24 million in Homeland Security grants. Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly announced yesterday that the new "monitoring network" would cover the areas between 30th and 60th Streets, from the Hudson to the East River. Like the system downtown (formally called the "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative"), the expanded surveillance network would feed streams of data for analysis to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. more ›