New York City Reacts to Jordan Bombings

Nov. 10, 2005 — -- In response to Wednesday's terror attacks on hotels in Jordan, the New York City Police Department is shifting high visibility assets to the city's hotel sector, much as it shifted them to the transportation sector following the London subway bombings in July.

Some 75 NYPD patrol cars and 150 NYPD officers staged on a Lower Manhattan street this morning to be assigned to two dozen hotels in Lower Manhattan and Midtown for security.

The hotels also will receive help from critical response vehicles -- convoys of police cars usually with 50 officers, but with as many as 100, that arrive without warning in a surge. They park their vehicles and rapidly deploy in a show of force and as a disruptive tactic.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said New York's hotels had not been threatened and called the security boost a normal precaution.

"If you want to be safe, I would argue New York is the place that you want to go," he told reporters.

Some of the hotels also will be patrolled by heavily armed NYPD Hercules units. Meanwhile, the NYPD Nexus unit, which works closely with communities and industry, is informing security at city hotels of the patterns and tactics used in Jordan and what they might do to heighten awareness at their facilities.

Much of that information comes from an Arabic-speaking NYPD sergeant in Jordan who is on bombing scenes with Jordanian authorities. That officer has been able to file at least six reports to the NYPD's counter-terrorism division. The information gets culled for relevance and shared with the hotels by detectives from the Nexus unit.

At a lunch a year ago with Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Jordan's King Abdullah penned an intelligence-sharing agreement that placed the New York detective in Jordan and a Jordanian detective in New York, according to police in both countries. The agreement took effect on Nov 1.

The Homeland Security Department was not yet asking state and local officials in Washington to ramp up security in the wake of the Jordan bombings, a spokesman told the Associated Press, though that could change if information indicated a credible domestic threat linked to the attacks.

Security at city hotels initially was boosted after the Jordan attacks Wednesday evening -- though there does not appear to be a specific threat against the city.

"I think there is going to be an increase in verification of one [or each] individual to bring luggage in, to make sure that luggage just isn't left in the lobby, but that it's accounted for," George Bauries of Criterion Strategies Inc., an emergency management consultant, told WABC-TV in New York.

A noticeable police presence in New York's Times Square neighborhood Wednesday gave tourists something else to see in the Big Apple. For some, it wasn't exactly a comforting sight.

Randall Rose, a longtime doorman at the Grand Hyatt hotel, which has more than 1,300 rooms, told the Associated Press he noticed unease among a few guests.

"You can see it in their eyes," he said. "They don't say anything but they're looking around."

Others had similar reactions. "It doesn't make me feel safer," one tourist told WABC-TV. "It makes me feel more nervous that they are actually outside the hotel."

But some said the police activity made them feel reassured.

"It's great to see them around," another tourist said, "and their presence … gives more feeling of security."

Washington state Sen. Linda Parlette, who was attending a conference at the Grand Hyatt, told the Associated Press, "You have to have faith. New York has been through a tragedy with 9/11, and if anywhere there is going to be good security, it will be in New York City."

ABC News' Richard Esposito and Jeff Pegues of WABC-TV in New York contributed to this report.