NYPD preparing to combat ‘Mumbai-style terror attack’ in city

NEW YORK - The New York Police Department had reportedly sent selected officers around the world to analyse Mumbai-style of terror attacks with an intention to prevent such attacks from taking place in the city.

According to The New York Daily News, counter-terrorism officers believe that Osama bin Laden was involved in the latest terror plot that caused lot of tension this week in Europe. Officials say that plot, which was disrupted at an early stage, was based on the commando-style attack on Mumbai two years ago.

Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that New York could be the next target following “India’s September 11″ terror attack that killed 172 people, where ten men armed with automatic weapons and grenades terrorized an entire city for 60 hours.

“New York is the top of the terrorist target list. That’s our operating premise,” Kelly added.

Since September 11, the NYPD has posted officers in 11 cities overseas and assigned them the job to rush to the scene of any terrorist attack, like Madrid in 2004, and learn tactics to protect New York City if any such situation occurs in the near future.

“This is an effective, simple and easy to copy tactic, we changed our deployment around the train stations almost instantly based upon that attack,” Lt. Kevin Yorke, who was among three officers sent to Mumbai during the attacks, said.

One of the key lessons the New York police learned from Mumbai was the need to move quickly and aggressively against an active shooter-type attack. The NYPD has trained to deal with multiple attacks at the same time and the cops can now quickly access building plans for hotels and other soft targets, something the Mumbai police lacked, causing delays and more casualties, the paper said. (ANI)