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Police Seek Teen Skateboarder In Brooklyn Bridge White Flag Stunt
By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 24, 2014
Modified Jul 24, 2014
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jul 24, 2014
Modified Jul 24, 2014
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Aside from a hastily assembled press conference two days ago, the NYPD has made no official update in their investigation into the white flags that mysteriously appeared atop the Brooklyn Bridge Tuesday morning. But police sources are talking to the dailies, and depending on which anonymous source you trust, the NYPD is either seeking a union worker with knowledge of the bridge, a teenage skateboarder and his friends, a July 4th fireworks worker, or all of the above.
Police have grainy security camera video showing a group of five young men walking on the bridge around 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning. One of the men appears to have a skateboard; a source tells the Daily News that "the five youths wanted for questioning were described as in their late teens or early 20s." Now police just need to round up all the teenagers with skateboards, which, we can all agree, should have been done a long time ago.
The Post's sources go further and tell the tabloid that police have identified the suspects. Unfortunately, they "know the culprits only by their nicknames and are working to get their proper names so the suspects can be brought in for questioning." A DNAinfo source says, "Don't be surprised if these guys hold union cards."
But another source tells Post, "We have no good images of these guys on cameras... None of the footage captures the perpetrators of this crime." That's because the bridge's security apparatus has been focused on a truck bomb attack—there are radiation sensors on the bridge, and cameras trained on approaches to either side, but the suspension cables and towers are not seen as particularly vulnerable. And a bomb (or comb) attack on one of the towers would not damage the structural integrity of the bridge, according to the NYPD.
Nevertheless, the NYPD was quick to add more cameras to the bridge following the humiliating security breach. And nearly three dozen top detectives have been assigned to the investigation, the Post reports. "Elite investigators were yanked from homicide, counterterrorism, intel and transit," according to one source.
Police sources tell DNAinfo the perpetrators had "special professional skill sets” that "could include construction rigging and hoists needed to circumvent locked gates to scale the 267-foot towers." One police source points out, "Even the flagpoles are not normal, and these people knew precisely the correct way to rig them and lash the flags correctly in place. This is not something someone can just dream up and attempt one day as a prank. It is well calculated and is more than a stunt."
Or, as another ominous source tells the News, "Suppose it was a dry run for terrorism, just to see how good the security is?" Though you'd think that if you were doing a dry run for a terrorist attack, you wouldn't want to draw attention to it by leaving a bunch of bright bleached flags behind. But what do we know? Remember to always be afraid and trust in the Authorities to protect us from terror and even bigger flag attacks.
Tagged
brooklyn bridge
pranks
stunts
teenagers
white flag
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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