Originally, the New York Police Department’s, or NYPD for short, job has been commonly three-fold; investigating crime scenes, taking care of deceased corpses, and once in a blue moon, retrieving a hijacked vehicle from the city’s murky waterways.
However, as criminals become more feisty and unyielding, the effect is the need for another type of police business to ensure safety of citizens, a team of scuba divers to the rescue.
The role of these sensational, foraging scuba divers creates demanding searches for any threat secretly hiding under water. Among the divers’ reoccurring scheduled tasks are searching for explosives or any toxins under bridge footings, also around ship hulls, as well as scouring seawalls. These assignments are quite different than the diver’s assistance with other police officers and paper work.
Since September 11th, in the year 2001, all NYPD teams’ objectives have changed from a series of ambitious counter terrorism efforts to aviation and harbor security, plus doing their best to ensure emergency units are graciously supplied with plenty of weaponry. A quote from the Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was speaking wisely, saying, “We’re configured to respond in significant numbers, literally, by sea, land, and air.”
For the scuba divers’ missions, the department began supplying them with four underwater robots, pretty suiting for the twenty-first century. These ROV’s, or Remotely Operated Vehicles, have cameras strapped to the body for easy access to the water. This surveillance aids the usually thirty-one-diver group search for any possible implanted explosives. These robots, however, certainly do not befall cheap. Just one of these man-made geniuses costs about $75,000, and more are currently on their way.
The ROV’s appear like actual mini submarines and includes duel propellers. In additional with this specialty feature, they also come with wide-angle lenses and halogen lamps. After submerged deep into the water, they can reach over two hundred feet down. Once achieving this feat, the ROV displays a beam of live color video through a cord to which is attached to a 17-inch screen on board for viewers.
Recently in lower Manhattan, one of the divers named Harris was at the helm of a 55-foot NYPD boat sent to investigate an occupied heliport. His job was to keep on the look out for anything suspicious near a hulking barge; this is also the location of the president’s helicopter, entitled Marine One.
Most teams have to use cameras to examine the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, the cruise terminal where the Queen Mary 2 docked, ferry landings outside Yankee Stadium on game days and rarely on off days, and a retaining wall on the East River beneath the United Nations Center.
Several other sites attract the attention of these teams with much concentration.
Among the organizations the divers attend, one is very imperative for the divers admittance to sufficiently do their job. The Harbor Unit receives special attention because the teams patrol 476 square miles of water and more than 500 miles of waterfront properties. The area of observation embodies the Hudson and East Rivers, also including New York Harbor, which is home to Ellis Island and the infamous Statue of Liberty. I would definitely want to keep Lady Liberty safe from any harm other than weather erosion.
Every year all of the diving teams acquire about one thousand operating jobs. During rescue missions, the detachment dives out of helicopters in approximately eighty pounds of essential gear, which subsume knives designed to slash through even the toughest seat belts and windows to free endangered passengers from sunken automobiles.
During training the divers have adapted a keen eye when recognizing small bombs or limpet mines. These dangers may very well be terrorist related from dormant groups living in the United States. The corps works with intelligence operatives on certain cases indefinitely out of the scuba diver’s reach and comprehension. This is particularly a great strategic move to secure American lives keep on living.