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October 30, 2007
‘Dismissive’ journalism
For years, Alan Rosner, the co-author of the "2005 White Paper: Terrorism, Security and the Proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards High Rise and Arena Development Project," has been trying to get public officials to assess the security and terrorism risk of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project.
We've recently seen the consequences of ignoring these issues in Newark, but when the matter was raised again in Brooklyn, one of our weekly papers characterized the issue as "Grasping at Straws."
This past week, the Courier-Life published Rosner's letter to the editor, which takes the paper to task and spells out the questions that reporters should be asking:
It is disheartening that your recent front page article on community concerns, regarding the proximity of the Atlantic Yards (AY) basketball arena to Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, begins with these three words, “Grasping At Straws.”
In fact, this sort of dismissal of the community’s concerns has been the response of AY’s proponents for close to three years.
Even when the Ground Zero site plan was revised to shift the Freedom Tower away from West Street out of concern that a truck bomb could bring down the entire building, AY supporters quickly labeled raising similar security concerns in Brooklyn as desperate.
Nevertheless, Community Boards 2, 6 and 8, several local elected officials and dozens of community organizations all submitted such concerns regarding the implications of living in a post 9/11 world to the lead agency for Atlantic Yards, the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC).
Unfortunately, even after the Madrid and London terrorist bombings, the ESDC ignored community requests to take a hard look at the public safety issues surrounding the development of a glass arena, a glass skyscraper and a glass entrance into the Atlantic Avenue Station that was the target of a thwarted suicide bombing attempt in 1997.
In fact the ESDC went so far as to declare such concerns as – their word –“unreasonable!”
Now, with the revelation that Newark did not address terrorism and so is being forced to close off streets every single time there is a hockey game, the same disregard for the substance of Brooklynites’ concerns is being exhibited. Thus the developer’s spokesperson is quoted as saying that concerns about terrorism are political, irresponsible and offensive.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the ESDC, Errol Cockfield, adds that the project has been “thoroughly reviewed by the anti-terrorism experts at the New York Police Department.”
Any confidence we might have in that statement disappears as soon as we learn that, as a former spokesperson for Newark’s project has been quoted as saying, Newark’s “homeland security director and police were involved in security planning regarding the arena.”
Your newspaper would do us all a real service if its reporters simply asked if the secret plans of the developer, the NYPD and the NYFD to keep us safe will entail any street closings – as it has in Newark – lane closings, barricades, vehicle inspections, or any other sort of disruption of traffic flow at the already near grid-locked intersections of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.
They might also ask if the MTA was involved in coordinating their security and evacuation planning with the NYPD or NYFD since I have never heard the MTA mentioned regarding security planning.
It is insulting to your readership to unquestioningly accept the self-serving and condescending claim that all these security experts can’t tell us anything out of fear of letting the bad guys know what we are doing.
As City Councilmember Letitia James has already noted, any disruption of traffic based on anti-terrorism measures will be immediately apparent the day AY’s Barclay’s Center Arena opens. The only thing that’s being kept secret is the disruptive impact that protecting all that glass will have on our local communities.
Not surprisingly, Councilperson James’s reasonable position is supported by the Supreme Court’s refusal to accept the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s claim that they did not have to consider terrorism when issuing a license for a nuclear waste facility out of concern that doing so would reveal too much.
And finally, in a related security matter, regarding your article about Rep. Anthony Weiner getting money grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help safeguard Brooklyn hospitals and yeshivas, perhaps, in light of the Newark fiasco, a reporter could ask Rep. Weiner if he could estimate how much of DHS funding might have to go towards protecting AY and the Barclay’s Center Arena.
And, further, if he thinks that such funding needs to be added to the calculation of project subsidies in any cost benefit analysis of this already heavily subsidized project.
These are just some of the many questions and issues that deserve answers. Newark is a wake up call. Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker’s belated, ad hoc response to an obvious failure by his predecessor to anticipate the possibility of terrorism reminds us how little has changed since day one of Governor Spitzer’s taking office.
Alan Rosner,
Co-author of the 2005 White Paper: Terrorism, Security and the Proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards High Rise and Arena Development Project
Posted by lumi at October 30, 2007 6:54 AM