Times Square a year later, concerns endure

Just over a year ago, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly was the keynote speaker at a closed-door conference of international terrorism experts at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan and told the group that the event was well-timed.

"Our enemies are resilient and they are thinking about new ways to strike us every day," Kelly told the meeting.

Two days later, on May 1, 2010, Kelly and the rest of the world found out how close to the mark those words were when Faisal Shahzad, a radicalized Muslim from Pakistan who was also a naturalized U.S. citizen, parked a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder carrying a crude explosive device on West 45th Street near Times Square. He left the engine running and fled back to his home in Connecticut. He was bent on killing and maiming scores of people that night.

The bomb, a concoction of urea fertilizer, propane gas tanks, gasoline cans and large firecrackers, could have exploded with significant deadly force, the FBI would later determine. But Shahzad was an inept bombmaker and the device fizzled out. Street vendor Lance Orton saw smoke coming from the Pathfinder and alerted NYPD mounted Officer Wayne Rhatigan, of Holbrook, who with other cops cleared the area and called in the bomb squad.

Just over 50 hours later, Shahzad, now 31, was arrested by federal agents at Kennedy Airport after he had boarded a plane for Dubai. He pleaded guilty to several terrorism charges and is serving a life sentence.

Today, law enforcement officials and security experts say the incident helped spur efforts by the NYPD and federal government to buttress New York against future attacks, particularly with the Securing the Cities initiative. In addition, while the arrest and conviction of Shahzad wasn't without problems, events of the night of May 1, 2010, showed that even small things, like an alert street vendor, can be very important in preventing a tragedy.

"If nothing else they [cops] probably understand the importance of tipsters," said Karen Greenberg, director of the New York University School of Law's Center on Law and Security, which hosted the conference where Kelly spoke just the bombing attempt.

After the close call at Times Square, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said the federal government has made Securing the Cities, which rings New York City with cops armed with radiation detectors, a permanent part of the nation's counterterrorism program.

A recently prepared classified federal study found the program, which involves cops on Long Island and in other counties, was an "effective strategy" that could be a model for other cities and has implications for a global deterrence of nuclear terrorism, said national security experts who have seen the document.

Another security effort ramped up after Times Square was the linking of surveillance cameras in midtown with an earlier centralized system in lower Manhattan. On Friday, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said about 3,000 cameras are feeding to a central point in downtown. Feeds are also coming in from Times Square, Penn Station and Grand Central terminal as well, he said.

Kelly said Friday that the city has to constantly hone its skills.

"I believe we are doing more than any other city, that I am aware of anyway, to protect ourselves," he said.