Local Government Downsizes Security Forces Amid Terrorist Threat

A Newark detective speaking on the condition of anonymity told me earlier today that our government is taking the recent terrorist threats lightly. According to this person, the total force of people working for the protection of the Newark Prudential building has been downsized. He was very upset during the phone call.

I was very surprised at all of this information. I was under the impression that our government was doing everything possible to prevent terrorist attacks. Apparently, they are not.

Just trying to get the word out...

That doesn't make much sense. Is this a temporary thing, like maybe only while the RNC is going on? I was under the impression that security was immediatly increased when the threat level was raised and that it would remain in effect until the threat level was lowered.
I hope that anyone with additional info on this will post. I don't see how they can keep this a secret if the force protecting the Prudential Building was downsized.

Jemison

The most recent article I could find on Prudential is from 8/7 and security seemed very tight.

thnt.com...

Is this no longer accurate?

I have no idea if what your friend said is accurate or not, but my own independent observations tell me this may be the case

Over Christmas when we were at a higher alert (whavtever that is supposed to mean) I noticed that the airport security was laxer than it had been earlier that year. I thought it odd that the alert level was higher but the "security" was lower. I could have put my kid on an airplane with a bomb in her backpack and no one would have even noticed since they didn't bother to look in it or xray it. She's a cute kid, but that shouldn't have exempted her from having her stuff looked at. She just waltzed on the plane with her backpack, no questions asked. She barely got a cursory glance.

When she made a similar flight during the summer (I believe it was June), she had to take off shoes, have her bags inspected, walk through a metal detector, etc. And this was at a time when we were not on a higher alert.

What is up with that? I don't understand...

What's happening is that an unprecidented number of municipal and state governments aren't getting the money they need from the Federal government. ALL of our states are in deep financial doo-doo. Bush spent our financial surplus and in four years has run us into the biggest deficit in history.

In the Dallas area, several city governments have been "downsized" and some services have been cut back. Depending on what the priorities are of each city council, you can expect to see a lot of things (including "first response" to the next "OhMyGod! It's CODE MAGENTA!") being whacked from the budget.

All of the media reports saying the security is at an extreme level is just a front.

One thing to realize. When the JFK assassination took place, a lot of secret service agents were relocated to other positions. They did not have the adequate security. At the last minute, the parade direction was changed.

Now what Gardenia said, it looks like every time there is a possible terrorist attack on its way we increase our alert but downsize our security. It seems like we have high security at the points when we are at a lower risk to keep our country on edge if that makes sense.

Do we really want martial law that bad?

[edit on 28-8-2004 by DetectivePerez]