The Securitization of Memorial Space by Nicholas S. Paliewicz & Marouf Hasian Jr

Author:Nicholas S. Paliewicz & Marouf Hasian, Jr. [Paliewicz, Nicholas S. & Hasian, Jr., Marouf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL002000 Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development, PHI034000 Philosophy / Social
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

This assemblage, however, would not be the only one posing challenges for police and legal forces.

Many other environmental junctures and fissures were features of these complex assemblages. For example, technical arguments about urbanization and traffic flows around the National September 11 Memorial became topics in texts required by the National Environmental Policy Act for actions “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”34 The plaintiffs’ lawyers were interested in going after the police for failing “to explain and generally [suppressing] the N.Y.P.D.’s rationale for critical aspects of the plan based on a purported need for secrecy.”35

The arguments advanced in this case tested the NYPD’s rhetorical arguments that sustained the securitization of memorial space, especially in jurisprudential settings, because now they were having to discuss issues that, at first glance, may not have had anything to do with the usual constitutional or criminal rationales used by those with a great deal of discretion during times of emergency. Could the NYPD find a way of rationalizing the existence of that tightly knit security apparatus when they had to confront local citizens who could find creative ways of framing neighborhood needs?

Members of the WTC Neighborhood Alliance asserted that the NYPD overlooked the local effect of extensive security measures and failed to include public participation when crafting its security plan (see chapter 2). The plaintiffs could highlight the negative effects of closing off local streets to vehicular traffic, and requiring all vehicles to go through state-of-the-art security screening at the Vehicle Security Center, for instance, was detrimental to locals’ quality of life by congesting their neighborhoods with millions of tourists, polluting the air, and mitigating public space. In other words, the case was a fissure that challenged the absolute securitization of space. As the main petitioner, Ms. Perillo, put it in her affidavit: “I live in the City of New York—not on campus or a gated community. I do not want to prove who I am to come home to my own apartment.”36

The specific arguments enumerated by the petitioners included a laundry list of items that the NYPD failed to take under consideration when they crafted their EIS. This catalog of proposed amendments—sent to the NYPD on March 12, 2012—included nineteen proposals for consideration, among them not-so-veiled argumentative critiques of police practices. For example, the list mentioned increased “pedestrian flow into and out of the WTC site and surrounding area to . . . prevent the creation of a ‘fortress’ environment”; a more transparent perimeter; “unobstructed access for residents, workers and visitors to and from the Memorial Plaza”; diversion of pedestrian and vehicular congestion on local streets; the impacts of police, firefighters, emergency service personnel, parked vehicles, traffic, and security infrastructure around the WTC site, and other concerns.37

What the residents wanted, in sum, was less securitization of what was otherwise public and residential space. Because the NYPD implemented a federal EIS for the WTC’s security plan without “taking a ‘hard look’ at critical areas of environmental concern” or adopting alternative proposals, the WTC Neighborhood

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