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NEW YORK — The NYPD believes the duo who climbed the Empire State Building Wednesday entered through a locked maintenance hatch on the 102nd floor observation deck.
Officers are reviewing surveillance video from inside the building.
The proposal on top of the building has been seen around the world, one that takes security breaches to new heights at one of the country’s most iconic buildings.
“It’s quite a disturbing breach,” said Greg Sanfilippo, a former NYPD sergeant who now works in corporate security with Doyle Security Services. “This is every corporate real estate’s security team’s worst nightmare, getting access to the roof or ledges of their building.”
Our sister station W spoke with an engineer who has been to the top of the Empire State Building, who said trained workers typically only climb the spire at night when the antennae and the radiation emitting from it are turned off.
A visitor said she witnessed the couple open the metal door inside the top observation tower.
“I didn’t see if it was locked, I just seen them open the door and hurry up,” said the visitor who was visiting from South Wales. “Along came these two people there and they opened the mesh door and went inside so I assumed that they worked there so nobody stopped them.”
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Kemberly Richardson has more on the couple’s history of climbing buildings around the world.
How they got the door open is now a major part of the investigation.
“They didn’t just stumble upon that hatch; there is what we’d call pre-observational surveillance, someone cased the joint, if you will, they didn’t just do that today,” Sanfilippo said.
Wednesday’s stunt comes as police and private security are already on heightened alert with the events surrounding the 250th anniversary of America and the World Cup.
It’s an incident that’s likely causing all buildings and landmarks to review their own security protocols.
“It could’ve been a lot worse, had they had any bad intentions,” Sanfilipo said.
Back in 2018, when a woman scaled the Statue of Liberty, she was charged with trespassing and sentenced to five years’ probation and 200 hours of community service.
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