Results tagged “security”

We received our smiley-face laden wristbands so that we may gain entry to the Vice 15th Anniversary + Halloween party this past Saturday — but around 11 p.m. that night we were already hearing that the 1994-themed extravaganza was total mayhem, so we took our flannel elsewhere.

What's really behind the bar at Brooklyn watering holes? Hopefully you'll never find out, but the Brooklyn Paper reports on some of the makeshift security systems barkeeps keep hidden from their patrons.

Some 150 National Guardsmen have been pulled from details patrolling the city's transportation hubs, as part of a restructuring that officials claim will actually make the soldiers more responsive to threats. Guard spokesman Richard Goldberg tells the Post, "We are at more locations now because we're not tied to specific facilities. You'll still see us at Penn Station and the airports, but you'll also see them at critical transport sites, like bus terminals." Last year the National Guard had 430 soldiers based in the city; now there are 280. Another spokesman asserts that because the troops are now stationed out of Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn instead of airports and train stations, they're better equipped to "selectively respond" to emergencies or as cops need reinforcements. Another bonus is that the drawdown will probably save the state over ten million dollars. But their absence has left some commuters, like administrative assistant Donna El-Maadawy, feeling very unguarded; she tells the Post, "I rarely see them anymore. Not having them present will makes me feel uneasy. You just never know when we may need them."

             

Yesterday was the biggest day of thousands of NYU students' lives as they graduated from their respective colleges and schools, but guess what—even that isn't enough to let them sit in the seats near the field at Yankee Stadium! With Washington Square Park's renovation forcing the school to relocate its school-wide graduation ceremonies to the Bronx for a spell, the Yankees prohibited NYU from filling the premium seats with students.

It's been more than seven years since the attacks of September 11th inspired the MTA to beef up security in the transit system, but a massive effort to improve surveillance underground is still incomplete. Back in 2005, the authority sealed a $212 million deal with Lockheed Martin to install 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors, as well as enable cellphone service in 277 underground stations. Today the Times reports that large parts of the project are not "scheduled" to be completed until September, and that estimate doesn't even include parts of the under-river tunnels used by the subway and the Long Island Rail Road. The project was supposed to be done last August.

With the city in the midst of a bank robbery renaissance, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly yesterday implored bank officials to increase security. According to Newsday, bank robberies were up 57 percent in NYC last year, to 444 from 283 in 2007. More branches like TD Bank (formerly Commerce) have adopted "friendly," open interior designs in recent years, and Kelly says that's part of the problem; he wants banks to go back to using bullet-resistant glass, or "bandit barriers." Some police officials believe another factor in the crime wave to be the cratering economy, which may be contributing to a rise in bank robberies nationwide—the number of bank jobs rose 6.4 percent in the first six months of 2008. But Gotham clearly deserves a better class of criminal.

Baby Jesus is coming strapped this Christmas—with GPS! Many churches and synagogues in the area are equipping their nativity scenes and menorah displays with the locating system to impede hooligans who often use the holiday season to get their jollies via vandalism, costing the places of worship up to thousands of dollars for the sometimes pricey decorations. New York-based firm BrickHouse Secruity offered free, short term loans of GPS to religious institutions that now will be notified immediately by email if their display is moved. Reverend Bob Gorman of St. Ambrose Church in Old Bridge, New Jersey told The Star-Leger, "We call it God's Positioning System." Their church is currently planning to to drill a hole in Baby Jesus' backside to slip in the GPS device before the figure is placed in the manger on Christmas Eve. Somewhere King Herod wonders in defeat, "Why didn't I think of that?"

An Army soldier was arrested at MacArthur airport on Long Island Saturday morning after she tried to bring a loaded revolver on a flight to San Antonio, Texas. The piece was not Army issue and 38-year-old Spc. Vonda Collier, who has been stationed for the past year at Camp Liberty near Baghdad, did not have a New York license to carry it. She was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon after it was found during a routine baggage check. Collier is on bereavement leave to attend her mother's funeral in Texas; police say she was visiting relatives on Long Island but her father tells Newsday she has no family here. And last Thursday a man was arrested at MacArthur for trying to bring a pipe bomb on the plane home to Vegas. He says he just wanted to "cause a giant smoke cloud, a flash of light and hopefully a loud noise."

A security firm run by former New York City police detective Bo Dietl has been hired by KFC to move the fast food chain's secret "Original Recipe" of 11 herbs and spices, which has been not been moved from its safe in corporate headquarters for 68 years. The single sheet of notebook paper, yellowed by age, lays out the entire formula, and was written in pencil and signed by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1940.

A study commissioned by the state police has determined that Governor Paterson's security detail is inadequate, so the squad assigned to protect him will be increased by about 45 officers. The Post, naturally, is quick to point out that the beef-up will cost over $4 million – "even as Paterson calls for cuts in state spending." Pataki had about 200 troopers assigned to executive security; the number shrank to 150 under Spitzer. The addition of more cops is something of a surprise in Paterson's case since he previously talked about "an element in the police force... of out-of-control people who had power that were clearly monitoring a lot of the elected officials." Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating these allegations about "rogue members" on the state police squad assigned to protect politicians.

The NYCLU says the NYPD’s “Operation Sentinel,” which would install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan, is an unnecessary invasion of privacy. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly wants to form a security ring around the World Trade Center that would make London’s famed “Ring of Steel” look like a velvet rope guarded by Don Knotts. And besides installing radiation detectors that could spot a dirty bomb, the Daily News reports the NYPD wants an additional 100 license plate scanners below Canal Street.

The NYPD is serious about security in this post-9/11 world, and, amongst many elements in a proposal called "Operation Sentinel,"is the plan to photograph every single car coming into NYC. The NY Times reports that the goal is to "strengthen the city’s guard against a potential terror attack." Vehicles would be photographed, license plates scanned, and checked for radioactivity.

Security guards have stopped searching bags belonging to people attending a biweekly movie night in Tompkins Square Park after a group of 15 activists protested Wednesday night. The Villager was at the scene, where critics of the bag checks had vowed to strip naked to ironically facilitate the security searches. Mercifully, it didn’t come to that. Josh Boyd, a co-founder of the free movie series, called off the search “because it was upsetting people.” Jeffrey Rothman, a civil rights lawyer who attended as a legal observer, sounded a triumphant note as audience members filed freely into a screening of Better Off Dead: “Rights that are not asserted wither away.” [Photo: Villager/Jefferson Siegel]

Despite formidable barricades, sensors, alarms and surveillance cameras, 13 “ravenous ruminants” recently succeeded in infiltrating a restricted area near the base of the Verrazano Bridge without triggering alarms, the Daily News reports. During the summer, the goats are kept at Staten Island's Fort Wadsworth because they excel at eating weeds and other vegetation that gets into cracks of the historic structures there.

A tipster points out that after 90-minutes of playing Webster Hall last night, "Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes got into a disagreement with the sound man over the volume of the monitor. The next thing we knew he was being escorted off the stage. We all stood around yelling obscenities at the management and throwing plastic cups at security. This lasted for about an hour until we were slowly corralled onto the street." The crowd eventually left what this tipster calls a "rotten facist venue." Whoa there, let's fill in the gaps.

After two incidents of X-treme attention whoring Thursday afternoon, cops were stationed around the perimeter of the New York Times building on 41st St. Friday, successfully preventing anyone else from taking a shot at scaling the side of the new skyscraper. Famous urban climber Alain Robert drew quite a crowd as he climbed up the side of the building around noon and then unfurled a banner decrying the human toll of global warming. The spectacle drew quite a police response and large crowds of spectators. Robert was released on bail shortly after being removed from the side of the building.

The NYPD has plans to spend $30 million to build a "super high-tech" anti-crime center. The luxe crime fighting emporium will feature high definition tvs to keep watch over the city, with cameras pointed from subway stations to underwater. The 22,000 square foot Joint Operations Command Center is scheduled to be up and running by 2011 and will be annexed to Police HQ.

Internal investigators at the Port Authority are faulting the overwhelming bureaucracy surrounding the construction of the Freedom Tower for the loss of confidential blueprints that could have left the new building vulnerable to those determined to strike the WTC again. Per the New York Post, "Experts say there was enough detail in the blueprints to lead to a devastating terrorist attack."

On the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, NYU officials announced yesterday that the university is "exploring installing an unprecedented security system involving an electronic remote lockdown system that would shut down classrooms and entire buildings" in the event of an emergency.

Yesterday, the Daily News created map showing how the World Trade Center will turn the prior super-block of open plazas and buildings into a heavily guarded and gated compound, with entrance limited to those who have been screened and or inspected.

Fifteen years ago today, a truck packed with explosives detonated under a tower at the World Trade Center. While it failed to knock down the towers (the parking garage suffered the most damage), six people were killed and over a thousand injured.

You may recall that the original Freedom Tower design had to be scrapped (because the NYPD thought it was too susceptible to attack) and redesigned with a concrete base. Now the Daily News' I-Team takes up concerns law enforcement officials have with "security weaknesses" in the new towers at World Trade Center.

Staten Island's Ninja Burglar struck again late last week, slipping furtively and unseen into a doctor's home on Melbourn Rd. in the Castleton Corners section of the borough. No one was home at the time and he scored big in his 19th break-in since May of last year, making off with $20,000 in jewelry. The theft comes just a little over a month after the man in black struck twice in quick succession in late November.

Another reassuring tale of airport security. At JFK Airport yesterday, an airport security screener was able to board a plane - without a ticket. Apparently the man wanted to go the United Arab Emirates to see off his parents, so somehow he managed to board an Etihad Airways flights without a ticket or boarding pass. And, according to the AP, "when the plane's doors shut, [he] told a flight attendant what he had done." We...