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NYPD Could 'Take Down A Plane' If Necessary, Commissioner Says

A plane flies past the Manhattan skyline at sunset.
Clive Brunskill
/
Getty Images
A plane flies past the Manhattan skyline at sunset.

One exchange in particular between CBS News' Scott Pelley and New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly on Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes is getting lots of attention today.

The subject was the possibility of another terrorist attack aimed at the city and the efforts by Kelly's department to prevent such a thing from happening. Here's an excerpt:

Pelley: "Are you satisfied that you've dealt with threats from aircraft, even light planes, model planes, that kind of thing?"

Kelly: "Well, it's something that's on our radar screen. I mean in an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane."

Pelley: "Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?"

Kelly: "Yes, I prefer not to get into the details but obviously this would be in a very extreme situation."

Pelley: "You have the equipment and the training."

Kelly: "Yes."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.