New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio used the city's only counterterrorism plane to take a trip to Canada. The plane uses sophisticated radiation-detecting equipment to secretly scan ships coming near the city for traces of material that could be used to make a dirty bomb. It can also stream live video from an infrared camera directly to NYPD headquarters.
De Blasio was in Canada on vacation and wanted to get to a ceremony for renaming a street in the Bronx on Wednesday.
To facilitate this, the NYPD sent its $3 million counterterrorism plane from MacArthur Airport outside New York City to Montreal, then back to Westchester County Airport with the mayor on board. Afterward, the trip was repeated to return de Blasio to Canada for his vacation, and the plane returned to New York City.
On top of the concern that taking the city's only counterterrorism plane so far from the city lessened the ability of city authorities to detect a potential terror threat, the trip cost taxpayers thousands of dollars more in fuel during the four legs of its journey than the cost of a regular plane ticket.
The commanding officer of the NYPD Aviation Unit, Inspector James Coan, told the Daily News in October that the plane was a game changer when it came to protecting the city.
“If we detect a potential dirty bomb in the port, it’s already too close,” he said. “The plane allows us to detect an anomaly a half-a-day to a day before it reaches the port.”
Both City Hall and the NYPD refused to comment on the matter to WLNY-TV, the local CBS affiliate.
The NYPD did, however, tell WLNY that the episode did not “impact other operational needs” and that it did not “comment on the executive protection detail so as not to compromise sensitive security matters.” The NYPD gave a similar statement to the New York Post.
Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for de Blasio, told the Post that this was the first time that de Blasio had used the plane.
The renaming ceremony that de Blasio had been shuttled to and from memorialized slain NYPD Detective Miosotis Familia, who was murdered on July 5, 2017. She left behind three children. Familia's killer was later shot and killed by police.
