(Bloomberg) – In the basement of the UN headquarters, every corridor and garage watched the wall of shining screens. The phones rang with quick explosions. The noise broke through the mechanical voice: “The card was rejected.” The operators barely looked up when they cleaned the alarms and recorded movements, a part of a mechanical device that transferred New York the most complex security operations that they face each year.
The UN General Assembly, which opens on Tuesday, brings more than 150 world leaders to Midtown – convergence, compared to Super Bowl hosting every day throughout the week. The event was described as a national special security event, the same classification as the presidential inauguration that releases the mobilization of the whole government.
This year the background is particularly tense. The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week, which the secret service carefully studied for lessons, underlines the risks of political violence. It is expected that wars in Ukraine and Gaze will control manifestations inside the chamber and increase the bets before it.
The secret service leads a plan. “This is the biggest security event of the year for us,” said Matt McCool, a special agent responsible for the field office in New York. With glasses and square jaws, Clark Kenta has the appearance of Clark. “Inauguration is another big,” he said. “But here you have 150 or more countries, plus their husbands, all in one place. This scale is unique.”
McCool said that planning for the General Assembly has been running throughout the year, with the most intense work in the last four months. Subcommons are plunged into the details of motorcons, hotels and screening protocols. Hundreds of armored SUVs and limousines are listed in warehouses on the outskirts of the city and are waiting for delegations. “It is a huge logistics company – hundreds of armored lemon, thousands of hotel nights,” he said. “You have to see it from the inside to understand it.”
Thousands of police officers in New York are assigned. The deployment is deployed by federal aerial marshal, coastline cutters and anti -cocoos teams. Hundreds of armored black suburbs Chevrolet are held in warehouses, while the secret service will record the equivalent of 30,000 hotel nights for their agents. The first Avenue on Manhattan and the UN streets will work less as urban blocks than fortified corridors for presidents, premieres and monarchs.
The scale is enlarged by setting. The net, conceived in promising years after World War II, was completed in the early 1950s with glass walls and open plasma, which were to embody transparency and peace. Every September, this design is covered with rifles on roofs, radiation detectors in Chokepoints and layers of technology and workforce that its architects never imagined.
Mick Browne, head of the security and security of the UN, said that complexity has grown only as the event spread. Inside the complex of its employees, it is controlled by the flow of delegates and dignitaries through checkpoints, elevators and corridors that have never been built to handle thousands of people who moved under severe protection. “The seat was designed in another era. We must constantly adapt.”
From the control room, reporters were accompanied by tunnels that run under the complex, a dizzying maze, where the only way to find out which building you are in is the color of the walls. The passages used daily by employees and safety connect the UN buildings from sight from public squares above. The route ended in an elevator that opened into the Secretariat building, where the Labrador circled bright red Jeep Wrangler when his handler carefully monitored the smallest signal that sweeping was no longer a routine.
“If you see me running, keep up, because it means my dog found something,” said Lieutenant Henry Meza, who commands the dog unit. Its dozen labradors are trained only to detect explosives. Every car, bag and conference room pass under the noses before the leaders arrive.
Above the ground, the presence is more visible. On the roof of the Dag Hammarskjöld library, the officers raise the binoculars and build their rifles through the first Avenue and search the UN’s housing towers. It is the culmination of months of preparation, including joint exercises with Secret Service in its training center in Maryland.
Even with this training, the service relies on reinforcements. Investigations of internal security, federal aerial marshal and traffic safety management increase their range. NYPD deploys thousands of officers. Every foreign delegation brings its own protective detail, sometimes strongly armed, which must be inserted into the system without creating new risks. The core of all this is a common command station, which contains more than a dozen agencies where changes in the intelligence of threats and Snap changes are handed over a minute by minute.
The city officials said there were no specific or credible threats against this year’s meeting, but posture is increased. The first Avenue between 42 and 48. The street will be closed. Crossstown blocks close. Rolling frosts stop the operation on the FDR whenever a motorcycle moves. Officials warned New Yorkers to use metro and buses instead of cars.
Back to the roof of the Dag Hammarskjöld library, a security officer with a binoculars constantly scanned the panorama. The buses still growled to First Avenue. FDR was still humming. On Sunday, the rhythm of the city would be replaced by motor, control points and frozen zones, all layered through a complex built for another era, but again to detain the world leader.
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(Tagstotranslate) UN General Assembly (T) Security Operation (T) Political Violence (T) Armored SUV (T) New York Police officers
