Assessment of security at city hall New York

Assessment of security at city hall New York, 15 Center Street
Introduction
The New York City hall is the seat of the New York City government. The building is located at the center of the city hall park, civic center, lower Manhattan. The New York City hall is the oldest city hall in the United States of America and it houses the mayor’s office, the staff of some of the municipal agencies (White & Willensky, 2000). Despite its age, the building has been installed with various traditional and new security systems. This essay is an analysis of the various, but not conclusive, security measures that have been installed in the city hall building.
Exterior and access
The building is protected from random access by having an external stone wall and the front face on the entrance side has a medium height metal fence installed to prevent intrusion from the street. In the immediate front of the building, a three-step staircase has been used in place of a fence. The three-step staircase is adequate to prevent motor vehicles from being driven to the building. To access the building, an open-for-access doorway is used at the front-side of the building. Given this is a public building; the front door is open to the public and always open during office hours. However, during off-office hours, the door is under key and lock.
In addition to the key-and-lock security system, all external doors and windows have alarms that are set on during non-office hours when the building is closed. There are both fire detection and intrusion detection alarm system in the building. For this paper, primary focus is on the intrusion detection alarm system. This alarm system is set to detect any authorized entry into the building during off hours. To this effect, the alarm system detects any open doors and windows, including the breaking of any window glass vanes.
Interior
The New York City Hall has numerous rooms, and to promote security within the building various systems are used, some of which are not revealed in this paper, for security purposes. The first is CCTV systems which function to record entry into the building as well as movements within the building. This is meant to keep a record that security agents can revert to in case there is a breach of security within the building. The second is the use of access codes which include passwords, guard controlled alarm doors, and biometric systems. These are primarily in staff-only access spaces and their uses vary. For example, while a fingerprint access system is used for staff-only spaces, guard controlled alarm doors, are used where members of the public are allowed, but in a controlled manner.
For all controlled entry access doors, only three trials are allocated after which the alarm goes off. The intrusion detection alarms are all connected to the New York Police Department who are tasked with maintaining security in the city hall. According to insiders, there are some rooms within the City Hall that are protected with motion sensors, especially during non-office hours. However, it is not clear which rooms are these or why such a security system is necessitated.
Personnel
There is a clear distinction between persons working within the City Hall, members of the public and guests. To this effect, there are keycards issued to persons accessing the City Hall. These cards have varying levels of authorization, for example, high-level personnel has keycards that can access even the most sensitive rooms. On the other hand, guests to the City Hall are issued with identification cards that have no other role than identifying the wearer as a guest to the city hall. These are persons who go beyond publicly-accessible spaces and they have to be accompanied by a staff member of the city hall.
Conclusion
The New York City Hall is a building that has various physical security systems. These are installed to restrict access to the building from without, within the building, and to track everyone who enters the building. Some of the security systems that were established to be used in the building include an exterior fence, alarm systems, password and keycard systems, fingerprint biometric systems, CCTV systems, and guarded alarm doors. Other systems suspected to be used include motion sensors. All these systems work to prevent intrusion, to delay intrusion, and to promote the apprehension of an intruder.


References
White, N. & Willensky, E. (2000), AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.), New York: Three Rivers Press