Keystone cops

More security - or in this case, lack of security - news this week coming out of NYC, and this one falls in the category of “Can’t make this stuff up” regarding the facility where New York’s Finest recruits are trained.

This inexplicable blunder took place in the wee hours of the morning on Nov. 2 at the entrance of the state-of-the-art building that houses the New York City Police Academy, which stands a mere three miles from my home.

Vandals not only desecrated an American flag, which was left in a heap on the pavement in front of the academy entrance, but also splattered red paint across concrete tiles and metal pillars leading up to the entrance, according to the New York Daily News.

In addition, the thug(s) appear to have rappelled down the building’s entrance archway, as a rope – with a carabiner clip still attached - was left dangling off the front of the structure covering the “L” in the block letters that read “NEW YORK CITY POLICE ACADEMY” on the entrance.

Now, you would think that in a place like the NYC Police Academy there would certainly be surveillance cameras on site that captured footage of the brazen acts of criminality. Well, think again.

It turns out that surveillance cameras on the 32-acre campus were out of order because of recent tech upgrades and were unable to record video of the vandal(s) before  disappearing into the night, leading police to try to pull video from nearby area cameras.

In the category of too little, too late, workers were seen the next day (see photo) installing a video camera on a utility pole across the street from the academy.

The incident took place just two days after nearly 600 new police recruits attended their graduation ceremony at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden. Perhaps they should have made sure their facility was properly monitored before getting their diplomas.

And to make things worse, the Police Academy has a security team monitoring the 730,000-square-foot complex 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, where were they when the vandals went crazy at the main entrance?

One police source told the New York Post, “What a security breach. Everyone who has that security detail should be transferred immediately. They have one job. One job. What an embarrassment. There’s nothing else around that place.”

A retired NYPD detective told the Post, “That’s something that should never happen. That building has many things in it that should be guarded 24/7.”

There’s no reason why not a single surveillance camera was not working, or that the 24-hour security team did not even know that acts of vandalism were taking place at the main entrance of the building they are supposed to protect.

Isn’t that a basic concept of Police Training 101 – make sure you have at least one backup camera working if other cameras are not in service? Apparently, that was not in the curriculum.