Cops Teach NY Landlords to Spot Terrorists
— -- Cops Teach NY Landlords to Spot Terrorists
Criminal background probes could become as common as credit checks for New York apartment hunters, according to landlords and managers who met with police and FBI counterterrorist experts.
Law enforcement officials instructed property owners and managers how to detect terrorists looking to sabotage buildings or use them as bases of operations, participants leaving a closed meeting at police headquarters said Monday.
"We have to get over this blase New York attitude," said Dan Margulies, director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a landlords' group.
The business interests requested the meeting after the FBI warned in April that al Qaeda terrorists had discussed the possibility of renting apartments with the intention of blowing them up. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said al Qaeda links with militant groups that conducted such attacks in Chechnya lent credence to the warning.
Counterterrorist measures under consideration range from background checks for renters to legislation requiring tenants to provide the identities of people living in their apartments, landlords and police said.
"We're going to create a cottage industry by having more and more people involved in background checks," said Joe Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a 25,000-member property owners group.
Kelly said landlords also mentioned the possibility of state or city legislation allowing landlords to demand the identities of people living in their buildings, and he asked New Yorkers to call a new 24-hour anti-terrorist hot line, 888-NYC-SAFE, if they observe any suspicious activity.
The measures under discussion for landlords sound unnecessary and overly intrusive, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"The war on terror has been used by the federal government as a vehicle to expand the law enforcement of federal agencies in areas well beyond terrorism," she said. "It seems that this is an analogous effort."
Law enforcement officials warned landlords and managers to closely scrutinize documents such as drivers' licenses and passports, advising them in some cases to verify that tenants with student visas are actually enrolled in schools, attendees said.
They also cautioned rental agents to keep a close eye on tenants paying deposits in cash and living without much furniture or telephone service. Asking for an apartment whose only salient feature is that it overlooks a potential terror target is also a warning sign, attendees said.
"We're in uncharted waters," Kelly said. "To a certain extent, they have to use common sense."
—The Associated Press
Treasures of Heritage Lost Sept. 11
N E W Y O R K, June 4 — First editions of Helen Keller's books. Sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Artifacts from the African Burial Ground, a centuries-old Manhattan cemetery. Thousands of photographs of Broadway, off-Broadway and even off-off-Broadway shows.
All were lost — along with thousands of other important works of art, photographs, negatives, artifacts and historical documents — when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, a new report shows.
"In emergencies, sometimes there is simply nothing you can do," said Lawrence L. Reger, president of the group that released the report. "There was stuff put in vaults that were simply vaporized."
The report, by Heritage Preservation, a Washington, D.C.-based cultural preservation organization, surveyed 57 museums, archives and cultural institutions close to the trade center site. It focused on the scope of what was lost in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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