Attack shows limits of anti-terror strategy
NEW YORk: Minutes after a man set off a pipe bomb in one of New York’s busiest transit hubs, trains were rerouted and throngs of police swarmed the streets.
The massive response exposed the limits of the anti-terrorism force the city has built since the deadly attacks of Sept 11, 2001.
It has learnt to respond quickly and effectively to attacks but faces an almost impossible task in trying to thwart every threat, particularly the acts of “lone wolves”.
Nearly six million people ride New York’s subway each day, entering at any one of the system’s 472 stations.
That open access is partly what allows US train systems to carry five times as many passengers as airlines but also leaves unique security vulnerabilities, according to a Congressional Research Service report earlier this year.
“You can’t search everyone entering a subway system, particularly a system the size of the one in New York,” said Tom Nolan, a former US Department of Homeland Security analyst who is now a professor of criminology at Merrimack College in Massachusetts.
“This is a fact of life, whether you’re in New York or London or Paris,” New York Police Department counterterrorism chief John Miller said. “It can happen anywhere.”
Attempting to screen every passenger is an impossible task and would only create more opportunities for attacks by causing crowding.
“They will never be 100%,” said Anthony Roman, a private security consultant who is familiar with NYPD anti-terrorism efforts.
“The goal is to prevent and deter the vast majority of events, and for those few that occur, minimise their effect by quick, coordinated, interdepartmental response.” — Reuters