New York Police simulates Mumbai attack

Since then NYPD has taken several measures to prevent such an attack and has held several real time exercises,including the one which it conducted early this month.

“The Mumbai attack two years ago was a bit of a game changer,” Mitchell Silber,head of the NYPD’s intelligence analysis division,told ‘The Wall Street Journal’.

“It was a model that most counter-terrorism practitioners hadn’t really considered. The armed gunmen roaming around the city taking hostages,that wasn’t something,we had seen by any ‘jihadist’ group. That was a real eye-opener,” he said.

The police officer said the more NYPD officials learnt about the Mumbai attacks “the more similarities we saw between Mumbai city and New York City.”

Both,he said,are financial centres; both are surrounded by water on three sides; and both get intense media attention. The latest simulation made additional sense,Silber said,in the light of rumours this past fall that ‘jihadists’ were planning another ‘Mumbai-style’ attack somewhere in Europe.

According to The Wall Street Journal,the simulation exercise was held on December,3 when more than 40 senior commanders took part and a facilitator introduced “injects,” or new complications,into the exercise.

According to a memo reviewed by the Journal,the police were given a fictional scenario that began with President Barack Obama visiting New York for a bill signing.

At the same time,convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was scheduled to appear in a federal court.

The attacks began with bombings in downtown that resulted in 18 dead and dozens injured.

The President went ahead with the bill signing at the World Trade Centre site,when another bomb went off nearby. He was whisked away. The attack wasn’t over,the daily said.

Six gunmen piled out of a van at Herald Square and opened fire on shoppers and pedestrians. They then entered the Macy’s department store and took 26 hostages,the report said about the drill.

As in Mumbai,police in the simulation had trouble containing and anticipating the terrorists. At one point,police who tried to rescue hostages were shot by snipers.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Chief of Department Joseph Esposito went to Bellevue Hospital to visit wounded police officers,then both were incapacitated when a bomb exploded inside the emergency room,according to the simulation,the news report said.

Paul Browne,NYPD spokesman,said this exercise provided several valuable lessons.

For instance,conventional wisdom was that the best way to deal with multiple subway bombings was to shut down all mass transportation and evacuate everyone by foot,Browne told the Journal.

But the exercise showed the advantage of continuing to use buses during an attack to shepherd civilians out of lower Manhattan,he said.