Lower Manhattan Residents Sue NYPD Over WTC Security Plan
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A group of neighborhood residents announced plans to file a lawsuit against the NYPD over its security plans for the World Trade Center site.
Residents like Mary Perillo say the World Trade Center site will be too accessible to tour buses and not accessible enough to those who live there.
"The police seem to be doing everything for the tourists at the expense of the community," Perillo, head of the WTC Neighborhood Alliance, told WCBS 880's Peter Haskell.
Lower Manhattan Residents To Sue NYPD Over WTC Security Plan
She said residents will have to traverse an obstacle course of barriers just to move around the neighborhood.
"We were a street before New York was a city or the United States was a country. This is part of the city, this is not part of the campus, this is not a gated community," Perillo told Haskell.
The lawsuit seeks to force the police and other agencies to explain how they came up with the security plan before anything is put in place.
"The NYPD is just acting 100 percent alone," said Perillo.
Perillo has lived in lower Manhattan for more than 30 years and says while she wants the area safe, she thinks the current security plan is ill-conceived.
A spokesperson from the city Law Department responded to the lawsuit Wednesday, saying the process was "thorough and public." The spokesperson added there was an opportunity for residents to offer input and detailed plans are available.
The NYPD's post-construction security plan, which will cost an estimated $40 million, calls for multiple streets closed to most through traffic with just four entry checkpoints and five exit points over the entire 16-acre site.
Police will man security booths, road barriers similar to those near the New York Stock Exchange will go up and concrete bollards will be everywhere.
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