This Francisco Reyes ll photo of a man washing his dog is one of hundreds that will be displayed in a photo exhibition by the collective Seis del Sur this spring.

Photo exhibit will feature insiders’ view of ’70s and ’80s South Bronx

A chance meeting at a photo exhibit at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies in 2010 led six South Bronx photographers who have shared a common vision of life in the neighborhood for over thirty years to join forces for the first time.

David Gonzalez, Angel Franco, Ricky Flores, Edwin Pagan, Francisco Reyes II, and Joseph Conzo Jr., whose black and white photos were featured at the Hunter exhibit, had spent the 1970s and 1980s documenting the area and its people. But although they had crossed paths while living in and photographing the South Bronx over the years, they had not had the chance to work together.

But when they met at Conzo’s exhibit, they realized they had been photographing some of the same places all along, just from different perspectives.

Flores noticed that one of Conzo’s photos featured a bodega he had photographed extensively during the ’80s.

Gonzalez, an award-winning writer for The New York Times, posted a photo on Facebook he had taken of a window in his childhood home on Beck Street. Flores responded by posting a photo he had taken of the same window, from a different angle.

Flores posted a photo of the building at 800 Fox Street in Longwood burning down. Coincidentally, it had been one of Conzo’s favorite hangouts.

Realizing the commonalities in their work, the men decided to pool their visions as photographers, and called their collective Seis del Sur, or Six From the South.

The name,” says Flores, “is a reference to the 6 train that runs through the community, and the fact we are six Boricua men from the South Bronx.”

Each brings his own distinct vision of the neighborhood to the group. Franco, the oldest of the six, spent his time off from work as a photojournalist in the ’70s following officers from the 46th Precinct, whose violent reputation led it to be labeled “The Alamo.” Today, with a police scanner in his car, Franco continues the work he began in the Fordham section of the borough, as a photographer for the Times.

In Angel Franco's photo, a boy sits in wait at the precinct.

Pagan, a filmmaker and cinematographer, and Flores, a photojournalist for The Journal News in Westchester, first met as teenagers, documenting one of the most turbulent periods in the borough’s history through their photos. Mostly self-taught, they each focused on documenting their surroundings, friends and family.

Pagan recalls sharing his prints with his mother while growing up.

My mom would ask ‘who’s that?’ and I would respond, ‘I don’t know,’” says Pagan, who was accustomed to taking his camera everywhere, though at the time he did not consider what he was doing an art form.

I was just excited and passionate about taking photos,” he explains.

Reyes, who lived in the South Bronx during the early ’70s while working there as a street photographer, taught photography at United Bronx Parents, the organization Conzo’s grandmother, community activist Evelina Antonetty, helped establish. Growing up, Conzo looked up to Reyes as a mentor. After 35 years of friendship, the men still take photographs together.

Conzo was a chubby kid with an Angela Davis afro who picked up his first camera at the age of nine. Early on in his career, he trained his lens on Latin music stars like Tito Puente and Charlie Palmieri, and later documented the birth of Hip Hop, taking the genre’s “baby pictures,” as Gonzalez dubbed them in a 2005 Times article he wrote about Conzo.

Like the rest of the Seis, Conzo took photos of his friends, family and surroundings, during a time when many photographers from elsewhere were sent to cover the South Bronx on assignment. For him, “the group’s pictures represent what they saw and felt, going beyond the urban blight that others tended to focus on.”

The group’s first show is slated for early summer, and has been two years in the making. One of the primary objectives, says Gonzalez, will be to try to dispel the negative light the South Bronx has been cast in over the years.

These pictures are our story, told from inside the neighborhood and our hearts,” says Gonzalez.

When Gonzalez returned to Longwood in 1979 after four years studying at Yale, he discovered that the landscape of his youth had been obliterated. To cope with the shock, he turned to his camera, to try to make sense of the changes.

Ultimately, I chose to take photos of life and people,” he said. “What distinguishes our work from that of so-called ‘parachute photographers,’ was that we focused on signs of life, as opposed to the rubble.”

The show will be held at the recently founded Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose and will feature a multimedia component, as well as a curriculum to engage young people from local schools. Michael Kamber, founder of the center and a colleague of Gonzalez’ at the Times, views the show as a homecoming and a chance to share the borough’s past with younger audiences.

Sin City on Park Ave. in Mott Haven has been the site of violence and car break-ins, police say.

Strip club violence
Police from the 40th Precinct are keeping close watch on Sin City. The strip club on Park Ave., tucked between a taxi garage on one side and Metro North tracks and a sprawling community garden on the other, has been the site of multiple incidents of violence and theft in recent months.

There have been 14 reported incidents since Jan. 1st directly related to the club, and numerous overnight car break-ins in the vicinity police suspect may also be the handiwork of club patrons. Of those arrested, many have had prior convictions for drug dealing and other felonies, police say.

“The clientele that’s coming to the location is the worst of the worst,” said Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, commanding officer of the 4oth Precinct, who says he deploys officers needed in other parts of Mott Haven and Melrose to patrol Park Ave. late nights to contend with the problems brought on by Sin City’s customers.

On Feb. 28th, a man left the club after a dispute with management, retrieved a 9 mm handgun from his car and returned to the bar to settle the score. Although no shots were fired, the suspect and another man took off running before police caught and arrested both men.

On March 23rd, Lincoln Hospital staff notified police a patient was being treated for a gunshot wound. Police later found he and another hospital patient receiving treatment had both been shot while clubbing at Sin City that night.

“Mott Haven does not need this,” said McCormack.

Two homicides
On April 15 at 5:15 a.m., Terrence Martin, 26, was found dead in front of 285 E. 156th St. with a bullet wound to the back of the head. No arrests have been made.

On April 16, a 16 year-old boy was beaten to death in front of 700 Morris Ave. and later pronounced dead from multiple injuries. There have been no arrests made in the case.

Cell phone snatchings
On April 18th and 19th, three cellphone thefts were reported on the corner of Lincoln Ave. and 138th St. A young man in his late teens grabbed the devices out of victim’s hands in all three incidences, one on a bus, another at the bus stop and one on the street corner.

Crime by numbers
Of the seven major categories police use to gauge crime in the city, robberies and grand larcenies have shot up over the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period last year. Robberies have increased by roughly 23 percent, from 88 to 108, while grand larcenies have risen from 60 last year to 74 this year.

However, rapes, burglaries and car theft are way down over the same period. There were 58 burglaries reported over the first four months of 2011, compared with 40 over the same period this year, while car thefts tumbled from 34 this time last year to just 20 so far this year.

Jose Cintron, father of Naiesha Pearson, and sons, at the street renaming ceremony on March 31st. Photo by Joe Hirsch

Residents and officials commemorate slain child

The corner of E. 139th St. and Brook Avenue in Mott Haven was renamed Naiesha Pearson Place on March 31st, in memory of the ten-year-old girl whose death shook the community when she was struck by a stray bullet in September 2005.

Some 100 family, friends, residents and elected officials gathered under a steady drizzle to witness the unveiling of the street sign in her memory. 

“Some believe the right to own a gun is more important than our children,” said Congressman Jose E. Serrano, adding that constitutional rights can still be protected even while stricter standards are imposed on gun owners.

“We have a right to safety,” he said.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito said city officials were at first reluctant to allow a street-renaming for a pre-teen without a lengthy list of life achievements. Mark-Viverito said they were persuaded to change their minds, because of “the impact her death has had on this community.”

Every year since Pearson’s death, hundreds have marched through the streets of Mott Haven on Mother’s Day to commemorate Naiesha at the Million Mom March, and to plead with federal officials to tighten gun laws.

Gloria Cruz, Pearson’s aunt, who has organized the march every year since in response to the shooting, told the crowd the renaming will help her niece’s memory live on, while serving as a symbol to help establish momentum to reform gun laws.

“She’s not a file in someone’s office. She’s not a statistic,” Cruz said.

Wallace Hasan, a resident of the Paterson Houses and, like Cruz, a member of the group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said the need to curb illegal guns remains as urgent as ever.

“Every day someone gets shot, if not here in another neighborhood,” he said. “These guns have got to stop.”

Taesha Pearson, Naiesha’s mother, was called on to speak to the crowd, but was overcome with grief as she approached the microphone, and walked away sobbing.

Rene Bonilla, then 20, is serving a sentence of 50 years-to-life for the shooting. He came to the Saw Mill Playground on a September Sunday in 2005 seeking revenge against a man he’d been in a fight with. Bonilla shot and wounded him, but one of the bullets he fired struck and killed Pearson. He was chased into a nearby building by family members and residents, who caught him and turned him in to police from the 40th Precinct.

Naiesha Pearson

Brook Ave. and 139^th St. in Mott Haven will be renamed for Naiesha Pearson, the 10-year-old girl who was killed by a stray bullet in September 2005 while attending a family barbecue at the Saw Mill Playground.

The renaming ceremony is scheduled to take place on Saturday, March 31, at noon.

Pearson was hit by a bullet fired by Rene Bonilla, then 20. After firing, Bonilla was chased into a nearby building by Pearson’s family members and others at the barbecue, and was injured trying to escape. Bonilla had brought a gun to the playground to settle a dispute with another man, whom he also wounded in the shooting.

Bonilla was convicted of murder in 2007, and is serving a sentence of 50 years to life.

“If we keep on like this we won’t have a future,” a tearful Taesha Pearson, Naiesha’s mother, told a crowd of several hundred at a Mott Haven march against gun violence in 2009. “Our kids will be gone, and then what will we have?”

Crowds of hundreds have come out to march in Mott Haven’s annual Mother’s Day March Against Gun Violence rally in recent years, including surviving family members of shooting victims and elected officials who have come to speak out for gun control.

Officer Daniel Enchautegui was memorialized at the 40th Precinct on March 6th.

A plaque was unveiled at the 40^th Precinct in Mott Haven on March 6^thto honor Officer Daniel Enchautegui, who was killed trying to stop a burglary near his Pelham Bay home in December 2005.

Enchautegui, who was 28 at the time, called 911 after returning home and hearing breaking glass from a nearby house, then grabbed his off-duty revolver and headed to the scene. He was returning from a late shift at the precinct on Alexander Ave.

Enchautegui identified himself to the burglars as a police officer and ordered them to stop, but instead one of the two men shot him in the chest with a .357 magnum. Enchautegui returned fire, wounding the burglars, before falling to his death in the snow.

His killer, Steven Armento, is serving a life sentence.

John “Jack” Nicholson, who was commanding officer of the 40^th Precinct when Enchautegui served, remembered the 6’3, 260 lb. officer as quiet and unassuming.

“He was a man you noticed by his smile, and by the decency he showed other people,” Nicholson recalled, adding he was traveling away from the precinct when he heard the news of the young officer’s death.

“It’s like the wind is knocked out of you, and it all just comes back,” he said.

Enchautegui’s parents, who have both died since the 2005 slaying of their son, had a home on Southern Boulevard around 149^th St.

“It was home for him,” said Enchautegui’s sister Yolanda Rosa of her brother’s time served at the Mott Haven station house.

Just three weeks ago, Deputy Police Inspector Elias  Nikas, commander of the 40th Precinct in Mott Haven, showed up at the precinct’s monthly Community Council meeting with his shoes polished and a big smile on his face.

“I’ll meet with anybody anytime, let’s have a great year!” Nikas said.”

So community leaders reacted with surprise at the news this week that he is stepping down from his command to take another post in the NYPD. And they said he will be missed.

“He had his officers everywhere, he understood the concerns, he knew the importance of leadership,” said Alex Diaz, the Community Council  president. “He was walking on the beat, he was really out there. You could see him and he was at every public meeting, where he answered all questions he can.”

Nikas, who has declined comment on his departure, leaves as the precinct is embroiled in a wide-ranging investigation into ticket-fixing by officers and union representatives in the Bronx. The NYPD has said he is leaving for personal reasons, and will be assigned to the department’s domestic violence bureau.

Community leaders said they saw no link with the ticket-fixing scandal.

“It actually happened many years ago, a long time before he came here,” said Gloria Cruz, the precinct council’s secretary, who worked closely with Nikas.

She said he was always available to discuss problems with community leaders, his own staff and citizens alike.

“He made them accountable for what they do and always tried to find a solution,” she said. “I am proud to have been one of his partners.”

The long-time chairman of Community Board 1, George Rodriguez, echoed Cruz’s sentiments, saying of Nikas, “In all my years going back to my time in Community Board 2 with Fort Apache, he was one of the best.”

“There are ups and downs in our neighborhood,” said Diaz. “We had spikes in gang activity, but we are not the only ones.

“I don’t have any details but I can’t think of him involved in this scandal,” said City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, whose district includes part of Mott Haven.

John DeSio, spokesman for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., said Diaz did not want to comment on the ticket-fixing scandal. City Councilwoman Carmen del Arroyo did not respond to a request for comment.

Mark-Viverito said that although she has only been directly in touch with him a couple of times, she remembers that he knew the neighborhood very well and knew how to avoid violence.

“I found him very attentive,” she said.

Nikas, who is going to work in the NYPD’s domestic violence unit, has been replaced by Deputy Inspector Christopher Mc Cormack, who had been commanding officer of the 20th Precinct in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

“It’s always hard when there is a transition,” said Mark-Viverito. “It’s what happens everywhere, but here we have a lot of challenges, so the change might be a little disruptive.”

The change comes a day after widespread reports that a Bronx grand jury had begun voting indictments in the ticket fixing scandal that has implicated officers and their union delegates, who allegedly made traffic tickets go away for favored people.

The investigation began in the 40th Precinct in December 2008 when police began looking into the relationship of an officer in the precinct to a local drug gang. Wiretaps caught the officer talking about fixing tickets, and the police and Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson launched a wide-reaching probe.

The NYPD tabbed Deputy Inspector Christopher J. McCormack, A 38-year-old Bronx native, as the precinct’s new leader on Tuesday, Sept. 27. McCormack had been serving at the 20th precinct in Chelsea.

Nikas referred questions to the Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, whose office did not respond to a telephone call and email. The New York Post reported that Nikas had asked to be transferred to be able to spend more time with his family.

As recently as two weeks ago, at the monthly Police Community Council meeting, Nikas spoke about how excited he was about the upcoming school year.

Roy Richter, president of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents NYPD brass from the rank of captain on up said there was no link between the unfolding scandal and Nikas’s departure. He said precinct commanders often work 100 hours a week and Nikas left for personal reasons.

According to press reports, as many as two dozen officers and union officials are likely to be indicted for fixing tickets and hundreds more will be disciplined by the Police Department.

“It’s unfortunate the Bronx D.A. has taken two and a half years with this investigation,” Richter said. “I think it minimizes the incredible commitment that being a precinct commander takes. It takes an incredible toll not only on him but on his family.”

The new commander has worked stints in three other Bronx precincts, including one for a special operations unit in Soundview. The day after receiving word he would be taking the helm in the 40th Precinct, he addressed the community board’s monthly meeting. Addressing the recent increase in stabbings and shootings, he acknowledged, “There are some concerns here,” and added “It’s not about locking people up, it’s about stopping crime.”

Five of the defendants were arrested in a massive raid involving nearly 100 officers from three agencies on Sept. 27. Two were already in custody before the arrests, and another remains at large.

Joshua Meregildo and Melvin Colon are charged with murder and could face the death penalty if convicted on the federal charges. Meregildo is charged with the slaying of Carrel Ogarro on July 31, 2010 around 300 E. 158th St.. He and Earl Pierce are also charged with the attempted murder of a rival dealer in September of last year near 321 E. 153rd St.

Colon is charged with killing Delquan Alson on August 27, 2010, around 285 E. 156th St.

The others were identified as Nolbert Miranda, Lebithan Guzman, Aubrey Pemberton, Felipe Blanding, and Javon Jones. All face a range of weapons and drug charges. Miranda is still at large. 

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the indictments on the day of the raid.

“For far too long, narcotics trafficking and the violence it spawns have threatened this Bronx community,” Bharara said, and added “we have taken another significant step toward cleaning up this neighborhood so that residents no longer feel like they are putting their lives and the lives of their children in jeopardy when they walk out their front doors.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the US Marshals Service and the NYPD collaborated in making the arrests.

Members of the Courtlandt Avenue Crew were involved in selling crack and marijuana, and resorting to murder and other acts of violence to defend their drug turf, according to the indictment. Some of the gang members also are alleged to belong to another gang that calls itself God’s Favorite Children.

The five defendants who were taken into custody and the two already in prison were expected in Manhattan federal court on the afternoon of the raid.

This is not the first takedown of Courtlandt Avenue Crew members, a federal official said, and added that it won’t be the last.

Delano A. Reid of New York’s ATF division said the arrests were “law enforcement’s second strike against this violent gang terrorizing the Melrose section of the Bronx,” and added “We will continue to launch an attack against this armed violent gang, its drug dealers and murderers, in order to give back the streets to the Courtlandt Avenue residents.”

NYPD brass had been on alert to the threat of revenge killings between members of rival gangs, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the indictments would help stop the “retaliatory violence among competing crews that plagued Melrose.”

Event organizers Danny Barber (left) and P.O. Irizarry (right) talking with a local resident at National Night Out on Crime (photo credit: Flonia Telegrafi)

Advocates and police partner at Night Out Against Crime

By Kathy Conkwright

conkwright@motthavenherald.com

The first time Angel Irizarry and Danny Barber met one another six years ago, they butted heads.

”I didn’t really like Danny,” said Irizarry, the community affairs officer for PSA-7, the  NYPD branch assigned to patrol public housing complexes in Melrose.

“I’m not sure why. I think we were just coming from two different positions,” he said, recalling their first tense exchange at a local meeting between community and police.

So he thought at the time.

Barber, an outspoken tenant advocate from the Andrew Jackson Houses in Melrose, had his own less-than-flattering opinion of anyone in a blue uniform with an NYPD badge at the time. To him, Irizarry was no different than the others.

Now close friends, Barber and Irizarry joined forces to organize National Night Out on Crime, an annual event held to strengthen police-community partnerships. This year’s Night Out was held at the Andrew Jackson Homes on Aug. 2nd.

Serving up free food, drink, music, a large Spiderman contraption for kids and the spectacle of police officers break dancing, Barber and Irizarry hoped to help thaw relations between residents of Mott Haven and Melrose and local law enforcement.

Although they represent different sides of the community, Barber and Irizarry have tried to bridge the growing divide between cops and residents by getting the two to talk to one another.

“For some reason we’ve lost that connection,” Irizarry said, “especially here in the South Bronx where there’s a real  ‘us against them’ mentality.”

“We do have officers who get crazy and overreact,” said Barber’s brother, event organizer Russell Alston. “But we also have young men, young women and old men who give police a hard time. It goes both ways.”

Irizarry takes rookies on a tour of the neighborhood when they join the department, to meet shop owners, clergy, elected officials and local organizers – all in an effort to learn the neighborhood and forge bonds.

Irizarry’s path to policing started in an unlikely place. He grew up five blocks from Yankee Stadium, and began his career as a community organizer working for a non-profit organization in Highbridge.  By the age of 21 he was coordinating an anti-violence program in the Dinkins administration.

“I didn’t have opportunities. I didn’t have a father,” he said. “I understand that state of confusion and no sense of direction.”

Captain Erik Hernandez, Executive Officer for PSA-7, line dancing with residents

“I want the community to see that we are people, not just robots,” Captain Erik Hernandez, Executive Officer for PSA-7, explained after finishing an impressive round of line dancing alongside community members and police officers.

“A lot of times, he said, “we are just seen as law enforcement and not helping people. I want them to see the human side of crime reduction.”

While flipping hundreds of burgers for residents and police at National Night Out, a soaked towel covering his head to block the smoke and sweat, Alston pointed out that the event gives police a chance to meet people on neutral ground and learn who lives in the neighborhood.

“It makes me feel safer,” said an Andrew Jackson Houses resident named Gerri, “because any other time when the police are around I don’t feel that safe. We really need this to bring the community together.”

But one young man who wouldn’t give his name said the once-a-year outdoor event didn’t change his mind about police. “This is just one day,” he said. “Tomorrow they’ll be back at it the same way.”

“We won’t be here dancing, kids won’t be jumping,” Hernandez responded, admitting that it’s impossible for the police to have a great relationship with the community every day. “There is crime and it is a necessity to enforce the law. Our biggest challenge is to keep this momentum going after today.”

The day before the event there was a homicide just down the street, he pointed out.

“Violent crime happens every day,” Hernandez said, “particularly in this neighborhood.  Sometimes people can feel helpless. We hope this event can give them a sense of hope.”

An iphone displays a four-way view of the Mott Haven Houses lobby that security cameras keep monitored.

Public housing tenants around the city are feeling nervous about their safety, surveys show, and two new initiatives being pioneered in the South Bronx are aimed at helping them feel safer.

But while both initiatives call for security cameras inside NYCHA buildings to help protect residents, housing officials support one, while rejecting a method tenant leaders say would watch out not only for criminals, but for abusive housing workers and heavy-handed police officers.

There are security cameras in roughly a fifth of NYCHA’s 2,602 buildings around the city, to help police protect residents according to the Housing Authority, but tenants remain on edge about crime.

Three of four residents in public housing complexes are “fearful of crime in their development,” according to a NYCHA survey conducted earlier this year. More worryingly, “55% of respondents reported that they do not leave their apartments due to fear of crime,” according to the report.

Some tenant associations have formed patrol programs, with tenants guarding lobbies in some buildings.But these unarmed guards are vulnerable when they try to deny access to people who can’t prove they live in the buildings.

“When they do get in, they may be belligerent,” said John Johnson, president of the Mott Haven Houses Tenant Association.

To address these worries, City Council member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who serves Mott Haven, is pushing to have security systems installed in all the public housing complexes in her district, and not just cameras.

Arroyo has allocated $3.2 million through 2012 to install comprehensive security systems, at the Jackson, Mitchell, Moore, Mott Haven, and Patterson developments in Mott Haven and Melrose, according to her office.

Mott Haven Houses will get a $250,000 federal grant from the department of Housing and Urban Development, to install what NYCHA calls a “layered access control system,” with new intercoms, electronic keys, and mechanical door locks for all building entrances. It would also allow tenants to easily replace or cancel lost keys, and provide remote monitoring city authorities can use to detect any damage to cameras or doors.

“Securing building entrances is essential to improving the security of our developments,” said a NYCHA representative in an email.

The system will operate on fiberoptics rather than phone lines, so tenants would no longer need a landline connection to use the intercoms in their apartments.

Johnson expects the system to be installed in the Mott Haven Houses by early next year.

But some tenant associations say residents should have a greater say in their own safety, and in choosing the security system that works best for them. They are taking matters into their own hands.

Both the Mott Haven and Moore developments have had security cameras installed through an organization called the Digital Divide Partnership, a collaboration between non-profit and for-profit businesses and the New York State Office for Technology. Using this system, cameras stream live video feeds anyone, including residents, can access over the internet.

In addition to increased safety and oversight, the systems installed by Digital Divide Partnership provide free wifi access to building residents, and are solar powered to conserve energy.

The tenant-monitored system would provide more protection than the NYCHA cameras, which are only consulted after police suspect a crime has occurred, its proponents insist.

NYCHA officials disapprove of the initiative.

“As these systems do not meet our security standards, they are not part of the recommendations for future installations,” a NYCHA official wrote in an email,

Yet tenant leaders insist they are within their rights, citing a statute from the HUD Code of Federal Regulations, which states that “HUD promotes resident participation and the active involvement of residents in all aspects of a housing authority’s overall mission and operation.”

“We want a virtual tenant patrol,” said Lou Torres, president of the Moore Houses Tenant Association. Rotating shifts of residents would monitor cameras from their apartments, and call 911 when an incident occurs, he said.

The tenant-monitored system would allow tenants to watch not only for criminal activity, but for abusive treatment of NYCHA residents by police and housing workers, activists add, addressing what they say is a common complaint of public housing tenants around the city.

“We have police here harassing tenants all the time,” said Torres.

Johnson, who serves on a board of NYCHA tenant leaders, was arrested last September while attending a memorial service in the Mott Haven Houses where he lives. He said he fields complaints from Torres about tenants being harassed nearly every week.

“It’s unfortunate that this has to be part of the conversation,” said Councilwoman Arroyo.

“Why not have both?” says Johnson. Using both the NYCHA security systems and tenant monitoring, “It would be more layers of security,” he said.