NYPD Guards Marriott, Ritz After Terror Blasts
Getty Images
The NYPS's special anti-terrorism squad, the Hercules Unit, is often dispatched to sensitive locations around the city following international terror incidents.
The NYPD deployed anti-terror teams to major hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott, across the city this morning as precaution in the wake of Indonesia hotel bombing that killed 8 and injured 50.
Within 30 minutes of the attack last night, scores of marked NYPD "critical response vehicles" -- police cars and officers deployed by the department's Counterterrorism Bureau - were assigned to Marriott, Ritz Carlton and dozens of other hotels in New York, said Police spokesman Paul Browne.
No new specific threat information against New York City has surfaced but the moves were taken as a precaution.
"There's no information of a similar threat to New York," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said this morning. "But it's our standard practice now to take such precautions and to brief security directors in New York of what we learn."
As soon as word of the attack broke, the police department dispatched a lieutenant from their intelligence unit to the scene of bombings, Browne said. Just 8 hours after explosions, the officer was on the ground and gathering intelligence from local Indonesian security officials. He is reporting back in real time to NYPD counterterror division.
The intelligence officer will brief Commissioner Ray Kelly and top NYPD commanders at the 'Lower Manhattan Security Initiative" command center via a videolink with hotel security personnel to update them on the bombings.
The near-simultaneous bombings in Indonesia ended a four-year lull in terror attacks on civilian, Western targets in the world's most populous Muslim nation. At least 18 foreigners were among the dead and wounded.
The blasts at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, located side-by-side in an upscale business district in Jakarta, blew out windows and scattered debris and glass across the street, kicking up a thick plume of smoke. Facades of both hotels were reduced to twisted metal. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw bodies being shuttled away in police trucks.
