From Tel Aviv to New York City, NYPD confronts threat of drone attacks
TEL AVIV, Israel (WABC) -- Time and time again lately we have seen officials in the Tri-State area using drones to do good.
But more and more, police in New York have been viewing them as potential threats.
Last month in Israel, Josh Einiger saw firsthand just how serious that threat really is.
In the dark sky over the Mediterranean sea, video shows that a deadly attack is seconds away.
An attack drone is sailing across the beach and straight toward Israel's second largest city.
Night turns to day as the drone's explosive payload rocks a residential neighborhood in the middle of Tel Aviv, where a surveillance camera captures the rest.
"And this is a smaller payload of explosive. Imagine if it was much bigger," said Charlie Benaim.
Benaim is an NYPD detective who lives and works in Tel Aviv.
A few days after that attack, he brought us through the neighborhood where it happened to see firsthand just how much worse this all could have been.
"These drones are a real threat. It's not a joke," he said.
On the third floor of an apartment building, a woman we'll call Mona - she asked us not to use her real name - told us she'd been sleeping when the explosion blew out her window and launched her out of bed.
"There was a lot of blood in the apartment," Benaim said, translating for her from Hebrew. "She thought it was from the cat so she was looking for the cat. She thought it was the cat.... She realized it's her."
She's one of nearly a dozen people who was wounded by shrapnel. One of her neighbors died.
It was all at the hands of Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who launched the drone from Yemen.
It flew 16 hours over Sudan, Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula before entering Israeli airspace.
Once over the sea, undetected by any air defense system, it made a sharp right turn, straight into Tel Aviv.
The drone was flying over the middle of a street, maybe around three or four stories high in altitude, when it detonated, sending shrapnel in every direction.
And if this whole scenario wasn't sobering enough, at the end of the block sits the U.S. Embassy, with an American flag flying outside.
"I mean can you imagine if we were, like, standing on the porch..." said Benaim.
Detective Benaim is assigned to the NYPD's Intelligence Bureau.
He is the police department's eyes and ears in one of the most unpredictable parts of the world.
"Nobody's safe," he said. "It can happen here, it can happen in Jerusalem, it can happen in Haifa, it can happen in New York City."
It's a message heard loud and clear back in New York, where NYPD Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner has watched with growing alarm the rise in attacks by drones around the world.
"There is absolutely a concern around drones being weaponized," Weiner said.
She thinks it is unlikely New York would see a militarized drone like the one used by the Houthis against Tel Aviv.
But a consumer device, something anyone could buy for just $50, could cause real mayhem.
New York cops do have drone detection technology, but only a traveling team of federal agents have the capability - and the legal authority - to take control of an inbound unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and prevent an attack.
A bill passing through the U.S. Senate would change that.
But until then, local law enforcement has no way to act on its own.
"The hope would be the capability wouldn't be responsive to some terrible incident happening," said Weiner, "that we would be able to do it in anticipation of and prevent something from manifesting here."
The knowledge and prevention is coming from lessons learned the hard way around the world - and seen firsthand by a veteran cop on a mission to protect New Yorkers.
Einiger asked Detective Benaim what his message from the streets of Tel Aviv is for law enforcement in New York.
"That drones are a threat," he said. "And we need to do everything within our power to learn how to deal with that threat."
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