Synagogues across the city will benefit from increased NYPD patrols as the city braces for a Passover holiday season shadowed by what Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Thursday described as the most turbulent and threatening terrorist climate of her career.
“In my 18 years of government, which started in counter terrorism, I have not seen a threat environment quite like this one,” Tisch told a crowd of Jewish community leaders at 1 Police Plaza during a briefing to discuss the NYPD’s Passover security strategy. “It is clear that we will be in a heightened state of alert for the foreseeable future.”
To emphasize the threat, Tisch cited four terrorist attacks that occurred on U.S. soil — including an attempted bombing outside Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side — since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.
These include a gunman wearing an Iranian flag undershirt who killed two people and wounded 14 others after opening fire in a bar in Austin, Texas on March 1, a driver who rammed his pickup truck into a synagogue in Detroit, Michigan on March 12, and a man who screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he gunned down an ROTC instructor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia later that day.
The attack in New York City involved two ISIS-inspired teens hurl a homemade explosive into the crowd at an “American’s Against Islamification” protest staged by Jan. 6 rioter and right-wing provocateur Jake Lang on March 7.
The device landed near Lang, members of his group and a nearby Daily News reporter covering the protest, but didn’t explode.
“These are perilous times to be sure. I know you feel the stress and anxiety in your synagogues, in your schools or community centers and even in your own homes. I feel it too,” said Tisch. “I also know the NYPD is laser-focused on keeping this city safe.”
To combat the threat, the NYPD is deploying assets including counter-terrorism divisions, the critical response command, heavy weapons teams and K-9 units to synagogues and high-threat locations throughout the city, according to NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Rebecca Weiner.
“These teams provide necessary deterrence and target guarding, and they should also provide reassurance that we are everywhere, that we can be omnipresent,” Weiner told the crowd at Thursday’s security briefing.
Weiner also touted the NYPD’s network of cameras and sensors, which are monitored by members of the NYPD’s intelligence division, and international liaison officers posted in the Middle East as elements providing the department with early-warning detection capabilities.
“There will be security measures that you see, and many others that you won’t,” said Weiner. “As this onslaught of misplaced retaliation, retribution and hate continues, we will continue to do all in our power to interrupt it.”
