NYPD and Port Authority Wage War Over Control of WTC Site

It’s been more than 12 years. We responded to terror and picked ourselves up by the bootstraps. We persevered. We built up the monumental skyscrapers that our enemies destroyed in Sept. of 2001. But now that the World Trade Center is nearing completion, a new battle wages. Who gets ownership of the new WTC?

The NYPD and Port Authority are currently in a brutal turf war over the property rights of One World Trade Center. The ongoing battle is nothing new and shouldn’t surprise any seasoned New Yorkers, however, new details surrounding the controversy have recently surfaced. Here’s the most recent play by play.

The Port Authority Police Department put a “guard booth at the site bearing the agency’s logo.” 

NYPD officials were upset. Officials ordered cops to roll up their own massive mobile command center just feet away.

PAPD then asked the NYPD to ditch their truck, which they refused. So PAPD rolled up with a new, bigger and shinier truck right behind them. “Our truck came in the morning, and they brought theirs in the afternoon. It’s like, look, ours is bigger and newer than yours,” an NYPD officer told The New York Post. 

A source inside the PAPD said the PA team felt like the NYPD was invading their territory. “It’s tantamount to the NYPD parking their vehicle in someone else’s driveway,” the source said.

The size of the trucks say more than you may think. The NYPD’s mobile command center serves as an office on wheels and costs $500,000, while the PAPD’s truck is used for “special operations” and costs about $1 million, making the WTC turf war one of the most expensive to ever rock the city.

The PAPD initially planned to wait for the new mayor to begin discussing the power structure, but earlier this year Governor Chris Christie said that the Port Authority’s police would have control of the WTC site. This contradicts a previous agreement made by both parties back in 2008. “Considering the history of this site and the ongoing threat of terrorism, it only makes sense that the N.Y.P.D. devote significant resources to protect the World Trade Center,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement.