Teen gives Ground Zero security guards the slip
Remember when that couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, crashed a state dinner at the White House? Or how about just last year, when a 9-year-old boy sneaked past airport security onto a plane and flew from Minneapolis to Las Vegas alone?
When people pull crazy stunts, it’s easy to write them off as hilarious high jinks, or perhaps, an indication that those people need some serious help. In any case, escapades like these always indicate major security breaches.
The latest in the news recently involves 16-year-old Justin Casquejo, who entered 1 World Trade Center, in Manhattan, and apparently encountered little resistance, despite the fact that it was 4 a.m. and he wasn’t supposed to be on the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Justin Casquejo made it past World Trade Center security to the top of the tower. From the New York Post.
Casquejo got onto the property through a small hole in an outside fence. His entrance was captured on a surveillance camera, apparently the only working camera on the property. What happened next was not taped, but he told police he rode an elevator with an operator who didn’t ask to see ID. From a top floor, he made his way onto the roof, slipping easily past a security guard who had fallen asleep.
Once there, the teen went undetected. For the next two hours, he hung out snapping pictures. It seems only his own carelessness got him caught. By the time he was leaving, around 6 a.m., construction workers were on their way in.
According to a New York Post account, Casquejo laughed and bragged about his adventure. That’s certainly irritating (probably to those in charge of security at the site of Ground Zero more than anyone), but he is 16 after all. And to give him a modicum of credit, he has since issued a public apology via Twitter.
One of the security guards Casquejo sneaked by was asleep on the job. From Timothy Krause.
But the real takeaway from this incident is the laundry list of specific problems that need to be addressed at 1 World Trade Center. Fences need mending. Surveillance cameras should cover more than the outside of the property. IDs should be shown. Security guards need to do the jobs they’re hired to do. Surely fixes for these problems are now underway. The sleeping guard was already fired, according to media reports.
The actions of one crafty teen aren’t necessarily indication that 1 World Trade Center suffers more than other locations when it comes to security lapses. More likely this incident only proves that security requires diligence as much as anything else. And although there’s comfort in the idea of an impenetrable wall of protection, in reality, that probably doesn’t exist.
Category: security, Trespassing
