Security efforts at the World Trade Center site will be reshuffled in the wake of two highly publicized breaches, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Wednesday.
The agency said Allied Barton, a firm that provides unarmed security at the region’s major airports, will perform the same function at the trade center site.
Security has been a focus of concern since a New Jersey teenager sneaked onto the top of 1 World Trade Center in March and climbed the 1,776-foot building’s spire. Last month it was revealed that three parachutists jumped from the top of the building last fall and recorded it.
Allied Barton’s four-year, $221 million contract signed last year will be expanded by about $60 million, the Port Authority said in a statement. The firm had been hired to replace FJC Security Services after several incidents, including one in which a supervisor at Newark Liberty Airport was found to have been in the country illegally for years and using the identity of a murdered man.
Summit Security Services had been providing unarmed security at the trade center and will continue to provide security at other Port Authority facilities, according to the agency. Summit signed a four-year, $136 million deal effective March 1 of this year, according to the Port Authority’s website. The agency didn’t say how that contract would be affected.
(AP)