MANHATTAN — Police Commissioner Ray Kelly worries about the possibilities of suicides at the National September 11 Memorial — but said the NYPD had a plan in place to prevent people from killing themselves at the site.
"We have to think about the possibilities," Kelly said, referring to suicides in an interview with Esquire Magazine.
Kelly, who discussed the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy, Haiti and the death of police officer Peter Figoski in the wide-ranging interview, said the department worries about grief-stricken mourners jumping into the deep pools at the memorial.
"People might commit suicide," he added. "We're concerned about the possibility of somebody jumping in. This is what we're paid to think about."
No one has yet committed suicide at the memorial.
Michael Frazier, a spokesman for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, told The New York Times there had been "no incidents in the pools, whatsoever." The site is patrolled by NYPD cops as well as police officers from the Port Authority, Frazier told the paper.
Off-duty or retired police officers are banned from carrying weapons at the memorial, but the rule has nothing to do with suicide attempts, Frazier told the Times.
Still, Kelly said the NYPD was not taking any chances. He didn't give the magazine specifics about preventing suicides.
"We actually have a plan for when that happens," Kelly said.
The 9/11 memorial is a tribute for the victims of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993. The pools sit in the footprints of where the Twin Towers once stood.
