(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The New York Police Department is providing officers with specialised
training to stop any suicide bombers at Sunday's New Year's Eve
celebration, when up to 2mn people will flood the streets of Times
Square, officials said on Thursday.
The stepped-up training is in response to an attempted bombing in a Times Square subway station walkway on December 11.
It comes on top of increasingly stringent security for the city's New
Year's Eve celebration in the years since the attacks of September 11,
2001.
The New York Police Department will also deploy observation teams
trained to spot snipers, increase the number of explosive-detecting dogs
and position more officers throughout the area this year.
Police have said they will incorporate lessons learned from what they
have labelled as three terrorist attacks in the city in the past 15
months, in addition to their ongoing analysis of all attacks worldwide.
That intelligence will form part of the massive security operation for
the 'ball drop celebration, a tradition that dates to 1907 and is now
televised around the world.
'You will see an increase in heavy weapons, bomb squad personnel,
radiological detection teams, and our technology to include over 1,000
cameras in and around the area of Times Square for the event, the
NYPD's chief of counterterrorism, James Waters, told a news conference,
two days before the event.
Officers involved in the New Year's Eve security operation will receive a
tactical bulletin and a training video on suicide bombers that they
will be able to review on their department-issued phones starting
Friday.
'We owe it to the cops to give them some kind of guidelines, Waters said.
The training material will include instructions on protecting bystanders
if officers suspect someone has a bomb and guidance on apprehending and
disarming suspects with the assistance of the bomb squad, he said.
Police will also be on the lookout for snipers in response to the mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival on Oct.
1, when a 64-year-old American opened fire from his 32nd-floor hotel room, killing 58 people and wounding some 500.
Detectives posted in hotels will keep an eye on guests, and additional
emergency services and critical response teams will be on hand, Police
Commissioner James O'Neill said.
O'Neill declined to say how many of the department's 36,000 officers
will work on New Year's Eve, in order to keep would-be attackers
guessing.
People who want to see the New Year's Eve musical acts and other
entertainment up close in Times Square will have to pass by dogs trained
to detect explosives and heavily armed officers, go through a
magnetometer to check for weapons, have their bags inspected, and then
repeat all those steps a second time.
Police will again use dump trucks filled with sand, police cars and
cement blocks to close streets starting at 11am on Sunday. About 125
parking garages in the vicinity will be emptied of all cars and sealed.
Even so, police acknowledged a possible suicide bomber could manage to
get close to large crowds of people before the checkpoints are set up,
as evident by the December 11 attack.
On that day, police said, a Bangladeshi man set off a homemade pipe bomb
strapped to his body in a subway pedestrian tunnel beneath Times
Square, wounding himself and two bystanders.
Asked how to stop someone with such an intent, Waters said, 'As a last resort: deadly physical force.
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