NYPD Prepared For United Nations General Assembly
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - World leaders will be converging on Manhattan's East Side next week for the United Nations General Assembly and the NYPD says it's ready.
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Police Commissioner Ray Kelly did say that tensions have been raised somewhat by developments in the Middle East, such as the killing of the Chris Stevens - the U.S. Ambassador to Libya - and protests in Egypt and Yemen.
"It's difficult to interpret precisely what it means for us in New York. Obviously we're very parochial. We're concerned about what happens here in New York," Kelly told WCBS 880 reporter Rich Lamb. "But in order to do that, and certainly we work with our federal partners - the Secret Service and others, in order to do that, we have to understand what's going on in these other countries."
He noted that among the 130 world leaders scheduled to attend the General Assembly are the heads of state of Iraq, Iran, and Egypt.
"We have security for people that come in and they're sort of ranked various levels of concern and threat and we allocate our resources in response to that ranking you might say," Kelly said.
The police commissioner said the department anticipates next week's demonstrations may be a little more volatile than usual, but added that his department is prepared.
The General Assembly will hear from the always controversial Iranian President - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - on September 26.
Sir Mark Lyall Grant, British Ambassador to the United Nations, told CBSNewYork's Evan Bindelglass that the United Kingdom's three priority areas will be Syria and the Arab Spring, the first meeting of the high level panel on the post-2015 development agenda, and Somalia.
