The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the primary local authority defending against a terrorist attack in New York City. Built upon the realization that the City could not rely solely on the federal government for its defense, the Counterterrorism Bureau was created by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in 2002 as the first unit of its kind in the nation. Since then, the Counterterrorism Bureau has been at the forefront of this new aspect of municipal policing: counterterrorism for local law enforcement. The mission of the Counterterrorism Bureau is to develop innovative, forward-looking policies and procedures to guard against the threat of international and domestic terrorism in New York City. One such policy puts uniformed counterterrorism executives in the rank of Inspector in positions to lead borough and citywide counterterrorism activities. Furthermore, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) has been enhanced with a dramatically larger complement of NYPD investigators and supervisors.

The NYPD has assembled a team of experienced leaders both from within and outside the Department to lead the Counterterrorism Bureau: Dr. Richard A. Falkenrath, the Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism, is responsible for the overall strategy and development of policies for the Bureau. His leadership team includes Assistant Commissioner Jonathan A. Duecker, former Director of the Office of Homeland Security for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Assistant Chief John J. Colgan, a twenty-seven year veteran of the NYPD currently serving as Commanding Officer of the Counterterrorism Bureau, and Dr. Dani-Margot Zavasky, an infectious disease specialist responsible for advising the Department leadership on medical issues pertaining to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.

The NYPD has transformed the role of local police at all levels of the Department in an effort to protect the city’s 8.2 million residents from terrorism. The Counterterrorism Bureau accomplishes this through its Borough Counterterrorism Coordinators, senior uniformed members in the rank of Inspector who are responsible for counterterrorism operations in New York City’s eight patrol boroughs; these officers are led by Deputy Chief Vincent Giordano, the Bureau’s Citywide Coordinator and operational liaison with the Intelligence Division and Patrol Services and Transit Bureaus. Patrol officers draw on their understanding of the neighborhoods they patrol to report any potentially terrorism-related developments. They protect critical infrastructure and conduct high visibility deployments to disrupt terrorist planning and surveillance based on real-time intelligence.

The Department’s strategic and continuous counterterrorism deployments include: Hercules, teams of Emergency Service Unit officers with heavy weapons and canines who conduct directed patrol at City landmarks and critical infrastructure; Critical Response Vehicle (CRV), uniformed officers from each of the City’s 76 precincts in marked vehicles meeting at strategic locations in a massive show of force for deployment around the city at bridges, transportation facilities, and other highly critical and sensitive locations; Transit Order Maintenance Sweeps (TOMS), teams of officers stopping, boarding and inspecting subway trains; and subway container inspection and explosive trace detection, in which officers examine bags and other containers carried by passengers entering the subway system to detect explosives.

Behind the scenes at these deployments is the Counterterrorism Division, a subunit of the Counterterrorism Bureau with wide-ranging capabilities and responsibilities. The Division is divided into seven subunits:

• The Terrorism Threat Analysis Group performs strategic intelligence gathering and analysis and disseminates this information, both open-source and classified, to the appropriate recipients in the Department, the private sector, the U.S. intelligence community, and other law enforcement agencies;
  
  
• The Training Section develops and delivers counterterrorism training to the patrol force and to other law enforcement agencies and private sector entities;
  
  
• The Critical Infrastructure Protection Section and the Transportation Security Section identify critical infrastructure sites throughout the City and develop protective strategies for these sites;
  
  
• The CBRNE Policy and Planning Section researches and tests emerging technologies used to detect and combat chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons and develops plans and policies for their use;
  
  
• The Special Projects Unit plans and deploys physical security measures for special events and conducts undercover “red cell” investigations to assess vulnerabilities within the City;
  
  
• The NYPD SHIELD Unit manages the Department’s public-private security partnership, providing training and information to the private sector and addressing concerns from the private sector. See the NYPD SHIELD website;
  
  
• The Emergency Response and Planning Section is the Department’s interface with the New York City Office of Emergency Management.

Police Commissioner Kelly has said that, “One of the stated aims of the terrorists is to attack America’s economy. Nothing represents the nation’s financial and commercial strength more than New York and the world class companies that call it home.” This is why the Counterterrorism Bureau is currently developing the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative to secure key financial sites like the New York Stock Exchange and the headquarters of leading companies and financial institutions in Lower Manhattan. Furthermore, the NYPD has been actively engaged in the Securing the Cities Initiative, with multiple joint exercises successfully completed. The Securing the Cities Initiative in the New York City region is presently the only initiative of its type anywhere in the country.

After the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD augmented the number of detectives and supervisors posted to New York City’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) from 17 to 125 and assigned them to the operational control of the Counterterrorism Bureau. NYPD detectives partner with FBI agents on terrorism investigations in the New York metro area and around the world. Indeed, the NY-JTTF has had the lead on numerous high profile international terrorism investigations, such as the 1993 WTC attack, the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The NYPD’s partnership with the FBI through the JTTF not only provides the NYPD with access to national level classified intelligence, but it is also a means by which NYPD can disseminate its own intelligence and analysis at the federal level and to other law enforcement agencies.

New York City has experienced first-hand the threat of international terrorism and remains number one on al-Qaeda’s target list. The NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau is constantly fine tuning its strategies and operations to meet this threat head on.