There’s a new book out called “Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force: the NYPD” that explores the tools and effectiveness of New York’s police force. The city has drawn on years of terrorism threats that started well before 9/11, and has established itself as a model agency beyond the current capabilities of the FBI and Homeland Security Department.
A striking, and somewhat chilling, example of their expertise is their tricked out helicopter that’s brimming with sensors and all-seeing capacity:
“It is a state-of-the art crime-fighting, terror-busting, order-keeping techno toy, with its enormous lens that can magnify any scene on the streets almost one thousand times, then double that digitally; that can watch a crime in progress from miles away, can look in windows, can sense the body heat of people on rooftops or running along sidewalks, can track beepers slipped under cars, can do so very many things that the man in the helmet watching the screens and moving the images with the joystick in his lap, NYPD detective David Aschau, is often a little bit at a loss for words.”
Part of me would love to see these capabilities visualized on the screens in an Emergency Operations Center, where map views and a cadre of information specialists work the data to display information to an engaged team of decision makers as they respond to credible threats. Another part of me gets chills about the thought of such capabilities. And another part of me is happy to know that such tools exist to keep us safe, particularly since I have a planned family trip to the City this spring.
