Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
NYPD On Bridge-Climbing Tourist: "It Is What It Is. He Got A Selfie"
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 1, 2015
Modified Apr 10, 2018
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 1, 2015
Modified Apr 10, 2018
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
After yet another tourist successfully climbed the Brooklyn Bridge and put a wrinkle in the NYPD's security theater, Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism and Intelligence John Miller assured New Yorkers that this was no biggie. But they don't pound See Something? Say Something into our brains for nothing: what if this kid was a Lone Wolf? How could the police be so blind! "It is what it is," a testy Miller told reporters earlier today. "He got a selfie. And if one of our scooters or walking officers had gone by, he also would have gotten a collar."
Miller often talks to reporters about "threat streams" and the state of non-stop, jaw-clenching, hypervigilance the department's Counterterrorism and Intelligence bureaus operate under, and he had just finished talking about protecting the public from "the unknown threat" with "assets on the air, in the sea, on the land," when a reporter asked him about the tourist.
"I think that this is a game we play, and I don't mean to be harsh about this," Miller said. "But there is a want, a desire, to spin each one of these things up into a threat."
Miller distinguished the tourist from the "unknown threat[s], the lone wolves...ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" that he had just spent several minutes discussing.
This guy's a knucklehead, who wanted to take a selfie, that was self-aggrandizing...He walked across a very safe crossover that has railings, and he got there and he looked up and he saw there was a fence, we have enhanced, working with the Department of Transportation so that it is now very difficult to climb around it, in case you want to changes the flags or something on top, and he looked at that and he said, 'Damn. I'm not getting around that. So I'll take my selfie stick and take this stupid picture and I'll put it on my website, but that's as far as he got. And if he'd stayed there probably a couple of more minutes than it took to get that shot, the roving patrols on the bridge, which are there all the time, would have arrested him or summonses him as they have had others, who have done the same stupid thing.
Miller concluded that the reporter's idea was to "take a story that is no story, and to build it up intro something more than it is."
The assembled NYPD brass then spent several minutes stressing the dangers of fireworks.
Tagged
brooklyn bridge
counterterrorism
risky selfies
security theater
original
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Deer are all over New Jersey roads looking for sex, state officials warn
Mid-October through mid-December is deer mating season, which can be a danger to drivers as the sex-seeking creatures cross roadways throughout the Garden State.
By
Rosemary Misdary
Published Oct 16, 2026 at 4:22 p.m. ET
Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
A transcript from an April court hearing sheds new light on what transpired at Fashion Institute of Technology.
By
Samantha Max
News
Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
A transcript from an April court hearing sheds new light on what transpired at Fashion Institute of Technology.
By
Samantha Max
Inside the plan to fix the nearly collapsed Pfizer Building, 1/64th of an inch at a time
By
David Brand
School bus carrying autistic students got lost in Brooklyn for 4 hours last year
By
Jessica Gould
NYC’s bridges can last 'forever,' if we take care of them
By
Clayton Guse
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .