NYPD Chief Calls for Radiation Detection Funding

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

MIAMI — New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly appealed yesterday to U.S. lawmakers to fully fund a program intended to surround the city with radiation detection equipment (see GSN, June 13).

The House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee last week approved a preliminary spending plan that provides half the funding for the 1-year-old Securing the Cities initiative requested by President George W. Bush in his fiscal 2008 budget.

Rather than $40 million, what NYPD counterterrorism head Richard Falkenrath called an appropriate second-year budget, Congress has so far only designated $20 million for the pilot program.

“I personally urge the members of Congress in the strongest possible way to reconsider their decision,” Kelly said yesterday, addressing the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism International Law Enforcement Conference here.

The program seeks to install highly sensitive and discriminating radiation detectors in and around New York City.  The technology is now primarily being deployed at U.S. seaports (see GSN, July 17).

With a mixture of mobile detectors and equipment fixed at vehicular choke points, Kelly called the initiative, in which the NYPD has partnered with the Homeland Security Department, “our best last defense to keep a nuclear or ‘dirty bomb’ from being detonated in New York City.”

Falkenrath said the city hopes to begin installing the bulk of the detectors in 2008 and that officials plan to be relatively overt about the deployments with the aim of creating an air of deterrence.

In an effort to better protect New York, a city that Kelly noted has been and remains in the sights of terrorists, NYPD officials are working with 28 agencies from New York state, Connecticut and New Jersey.

“To make New York City safe we have to make the entire region safe,” he said, adding that the radiation detection initiative “holds the potential to be a model for other cities to follow provided it is fully funded and done correctly.”

Speaking about the pending funding cut earlier in the week, Vayl Oxford, head of the Homeland Security Department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said, “We’re not sure Congress is buying the model.”

Kelly cautioned that the WMD threat is fading from the American consciousness and called for maintaining attention to securing fissile and radiological materials at their source.  “It appears our national sense of urgency about this threat is waning,” he said.

As the current version of the Homeland Security appropriations bill moves to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote, Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee plan to offer an amendment to fully fund the New York program, a GOP aide said yesterday.

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