NEW YORK — Nearly 60 vulnerable intersections in Manhattan from 59th Street to the Battery are being outfitted with cement barricades intended to stop a wayward vehicle from mowing down pedestrians, the New York City mayor’s office said Thursday.
Giant cement blocks and jersey barriers — rectangular barricades installed by crane — have begun being installed at intersections beginning on Thursday.
“Vehicles won’t be able to access places they aren’t supposed to,” said Ben Sarle, a mayoral spokesman. “They’re extremely heavy and effective.”
Sarle said the installations are expected to be finished soon.
The move comes after suspected terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, 29, drove a rented pickup truck on a mile-long trail of destruction Tuesday along a bicycle path on the West Side, killing eight people and injuring at least a dozen others, officials said.
Saipov picked Halloween for his terrorist attack on a waterfront bicycle path in lower Manhattan to “kill as many people as he could,” according to a criminal complaint released Wednesday.
A top police official said Thursday that capturing Saipov alive could help authorities better understand how ordinary people become radicalized.
“When you capture a live terrorist you have the ability to question that person and you’re able to glean a lot,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.
Investigators can learn whether the person acted alone or was part of a network, or whether the person communicated with a terror network online or through encrypted message, Miller said on “CBS This Morning.”
“But you can also go deeper into those questions about what brought you to this point,” Miller said.
“And there are former defendants in cases like this where we’ve learned a lot about the arc of their radicalization,” he said.
Questioned by the hosts about how to change that arc, Miller said authorities are working on that and have reached out to the Muslim community but conceded, “We have no effective counter message today.”
Appearing Thursday morning on NBC’s “Today Show,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill also said police will learn from the Halloween attack.
“Every time there’s an incident, we have to learn from it. We have to see what we can do better,” O’Neill said.
It is not clear whether Saipov knew just how close he was to the site of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said. His truck came to a halt when it hit a school bus just five blocks north of the Sept. 11 memorial site.
Saipov was being held without bail after he was arraigned Wednesday on two federal charges: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of a motor vehicle.
He is a legal permanent resident of the United States who came from Uzbekistan in 2010, officials said.
Prosecutors and police said he meticulously planned his attack during the past year, making test runs for his deadly rampage.
After his arrest Saipov asked authorities whether he could display an ISIS flag in his hospital room and said he had contemplated putting an ISIS flag on the rented truck, a court complaint said.
A search of his cellphones showed Saipov had 90 videos of ISIS executions as well as 3,800 images of ISIS propaganda, prosecutors said.
He admitted to authorities he was “inspired to commit the act by the ISIS videos that he watched,” said Joon H. Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Investigators found notes, handwritten in Arabic, that Saipov left behind and “the gist” of them was that “the Islamic State would endure forever,” Miller said Wednesday.
Saipov appeared to follow ISIS instructions put out on social media “almost to a T,” Miller said. Authorities said he shouted “Allahu akbar” during the attack, which in Arabic means “God is great.”
Five of the people killed were natives of Argentina who were part of a group of friends in New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation.
A Belgian woman also was killed, along with Darren Drake, 33, of New Jersey, and Nicholas Cleves, 23, of Manhattan.
Saipov’s federal defender, David Patton, said outside the courthouse that the public should allow “the judicial process (to) play out.
“It’s especially important in a case like this. I promise you that how we treat Mr. Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us that it will say about him,” Patton said.
Law enforcement officials on Wednesday afternoon issued and then canceled an alert for a “person of interest” who was wanted “in connection” with the attack.
The alert identified the man they wanted to speak with as Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, who, like Saipov, was from Uzbekistan. It was issued under the banner “Seeking Information.”
Within an hour William F. Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, said, without elaboration, “We have found him.”
Sources said Thursday that Kadirov was an acquaintance of Saipov’s who was wanted for questioning about what he knew about Saipov. Kadirov was quickly located, questioned, not charged with any crime, and let go, the sources said.
In Paterson, where Saipov lives, The Islamic Center of Passaic County received eight threats in phone calls on Wednesday and Thursday, its president said.
The callers said things like, “I will get you,” “I will burn your center down,” and “get out of the country,” Islamic Center CEO and president Omar Awad said Thursday afternoon in a phone interview.
The threats have come to the center’s location on Derrom Avenue in Paterson.
The Omar Mosque, on Genessee and Getty avenues in Paterson, has recently been in the news because Saipov lived around the corner from it, but worshippers say he was never seen there.
Awad said the callers have used “foul language.” The center has been able to record three of the eight calls, he said.
“This is the first time that this is happening with this frequency,” he said.
The Islamic Center said it contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Paterson Police Department and the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office. Paterson police and the sheriff’s office did not return requests for comment; Homeland Security referred calls to the FBI.
Police have provided officers around the campus and the center’s own security is there for prayer services, Awad said.
“We’re still extremely worried about the safety of our congregants,” Awad said.
Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale confirmed that “telephonic threats” were made to the Islamic Center. He said the Omar Mosque has not been threatened.
Speziale said in a telephone interview on Thursday that Paterson police responded to the Islamic Center about the threats and his department notified the county prosecutor’s office and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Speziale said his department is paying “special attention to all houses of worship” in Paterson.
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(Stefanie Dazio and Robert E. Kessler contributed to this report)
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