NYPD Prepares for Mumbai Style Attacks

After seeing just how easily a terrorist attack like the recent ones in Mumbai can take place, the NYPD is taking steps to train their officers to be able to fight back with full force.
All rookies will now be trained to handle a M4 machine gun. It is good to see that the threat of Islamic terrorism is being taken so seriously and that the good guys are training for the situation, because the bad guys are too.


CITY COPS PREP FOR 'MUMBAI'
MACHINE-GUN TRAINING

By LARRY CELONA and ANDY GELLER
December 8, 2008
In the aftermath of the deadly Mumbai terror attacks, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has come out with guns blazing - with a plan to get all 1,000 rookie cops ready to use heavy artillery in time for New Year's Eve, The Post has learned.


The NYPD wants all 1,000 Police Academy recruits trained to use M4 automatic machine guns - which are now carried only by the 400 cops in its elite Emergency Service Unit - in time for the holiday celebration in Times Square.

The recruits currently at the academy will get three days of training to familiarize them with the weapon, police said.

The department also plans to train its 2,000 officers in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. They include narcotics, vice, gang- and auto-crime cops. That means five times as many cops will be able to use these powerful weapons as now.

"In the event of multiple terrorist attacks, these other units will be deployed to supplement Emergency Services," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Kelly had proposed training other cops in the use of the weapon, a compact version of the M16 combat assault rifle used by the military, during previous "tabletop exercises" that dealt with responding to multiple terrorist attacks, Browne said. The final decision to undertake the training was made after the three-day Mumbai, India, assault, which began Nov. 26.

In the carnage in the city formerly known as Bombay, 10 terrorists carrying automatic rifles and grenades attacked a railway station, a market, a restaurant popular with foreigners, two luxury hotels and a Jewish center.

At least 195 people were killed and 295 wounded. The dead included 18 foreigners, among them six Americans.

Police sources said NYPD brass decided to train the members of the current academy class because they are all in one place and it is easier than bringing them back for instruction once they are in the field.

The recruits' three-day training is being called "familiarization" because it is shorter than the two weeks Emergency Service officers receive on such weapons. However, those cops also get training in other heavy weapons during that time.

The recruits' instruction will be carried out at the police range at Rodman's Neck in The Bronx.

There is no intelligence Times Square will be a target on New Year's Eve. The area will be on high alert, but has been so for every year since the millennium.

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