Jose Luis Soares, 65 years old, was tried for breaking into the New York Police Department headquarters building, One Police Plaza. After being charged with two trespassing offences, he will have to serve an unannounced alternative sentence until January 8, 2024.
According to the North American newspaper “New York Post”, Jose Soares sneaked under a garage door, in a heavily guarded area, to enter the New York Police headquarters, in the United States of America. The building includes two garages, and it is not certain which one he entered into or the reasons that prompted him to make this “undertaking.”
According to court documents, the man sneaked into the building on October 28, passing through several security checkpoints accompanied by armed officers. He went up to the second floor and entered the Joint Operations Center (JOC, in the original abbreviation), through a door designated for “commissioners,” and continued to the roof of the building, on the fourteenth floor.
The JOC, where police monitor the city’s surveillance cameras, requires a separate security level for entry. The space includes an operations centre, operations room, data center and a police commissioner conference room.
“It’s supposed to be one of the safest buildings in the city,” a Manhattan police officer said. He added in an interview with the New York Post: “This shows the incompetence of some of the people we employ. What a failure.”
To enter the building, official authorization of authorized personnel is required. Visitors have their own entrance, guarded and equipped with metal detectors. The One Plaza Hotel suffered a security breach in April, when former police officer Michael Dodd, one of the most corrupt officers in NYPD history, entered the building and celebrated on Instagram, the NYPD recalls.
