NYPD Deploying Heavily-Armed Anti-Terror Squads to Major Sports, Concert Venues
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The NYPD will be rolling out additional security around Madison Square Garden and Brooklyn's Barclays Center as the holidays approach.
The department has trained local officers in the Midtown South and 78th precincts and have armed them with semi-automatic Colt M4 Commando rifles, 1010 WINS' Juliet Papa reported.
The officers are familiar with the venues and the neighborhoods, and are designed to quickly respond to combat a terror threat in the venues.
The officers have already had two weeks of training and would augment the specially earmarked Strategic Response Group that roam the city.
Similar patrols are expected next year at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field and other summer or outdoor venues.
Police Commissioner James O'Neill ordered increased security measures after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at Manchester Arena in England in May, the New York Post reported.
The news comes weeks after eight people were killed and a dozen others injured in a terrorist attack along a bike path in Lower Manhattan. Sayfullo Saipov is accused of driving a rented pickup truck down the West Side bike path, plowing into bicyclists and pedestrians for an entire mile before crashing into a school bus. He is facing terror charges.
