Watch again: NYC Mayor speaks about New Year’s security preparations

Watch again: NYC Mayor speaks about New Year’s security preparations

My name is Jack me know where we good good all right good afternoon everybody excited to be here to kick off our New Year’s Eve 2024 security press conference we’re looking forward to a happy safe and prosperous New Year to piggy back on a very safe year for the

NYPD in New York city so without further Ado I want to kick it over to the honorable mayor Eric Adams thanks thanks so so so much uh Deputy Commissioner Shepherd and really thank all of you uh no one does it better than the New York City Police

Department in bringing in a new year uh hundreds of thousands of people will be out here lined up and no matter how often we see it you never get used to it the excitement remains over and over again and we are really looking forward to bringing in

2024 here in Time Square Time Square want to thank the team the entire uh uh DT NY PD FDNY and you know the Time Square Alliance this is their show this is their Super Bowl this is their opportunity to show what they do best uh when the lights are on on Broadway the

Lights are on in New York City and the lights are on in America this is America City and we are proud to host this major event uh every year thousands of people come here and they enjoy themselves and we only have one ask uh spend as much

Money as possible leave all that money right here in New York City and we want everyone to have a great time we want everyone to uh follow the rules uh we want to make sure uh that we continue to move in the right direction in this city

Uh crime is down and jobs are up we are trending in a direction that we committed and promised ourselves that we were going to do two years ago when this Administration came into place when we came here to office you don’t you love New York when you came into office every

Day we wanted to deliver on that on that on that promise events of this size we know how to safeguard events of this size uh we have major events going on at one time in this city and with the collaboration of all of our agencies and

Organizations we get it right and we do it right all the time and this includes a patrol service bureau uh South uh Transit Bureau intelligence and counterterrorism Bureau and the Special Operation division we will be out here with our Kines our horsebacks our drones our helicopters our boats the full

Complement of our Public Safety apparatus will be on display now we’re urging everyone if you are here for the first time you know you’re not going to drive during this weekend public transportation is open we are really encouraging everyone to use mass transit and there’s certain items you cannot

Bring into the safety Z Zone like large backpacks and alcoholic beverage are strictly prohibited so please check before coming in so you won’t be turned away we’ll find out of the best routes to come in and the best time to be here we know some folks line up early in the

Day and remain here throughout the day of you know more power to you uh and we really love your enthusiasm and we encourage you to have a lot of fun this weekend so I’m wishing everyone a healthy safe productive 2024 uh this is a a great year that

We’ve had here in the city with all of the obstacles and challenges and we are looking forward to leaning into 2024 and continue to do the things that we do bring down CME and increase employment and know that this is the safest big city in America New York City thank you

Very much thank you TQ all our next speaker will be our chief of Department Jeffrey Madre right difference a year makes good afternoon everyone thank you mayor Adams to all of our agency partners and to president Tom Harris uh let me Begin by stating very clearly there are no specific credible threats to our New Year’s Eve

Festivities or to the city of New York in general and I’m going to directly quote the mayor no one does it like the NYPD this is one of the most well policed best protected events each year planning for this year’s celebra celebration began as soon as our as our

Partners from sanitation cleaned up the last piece of confetti that fell here nearly a year ago each year we handled this enormous undertaking all while maintaining our ability to respond to calls for service throughout all five burrows and we don’t do this alone we’re in lock step with our federal state our

Local agency partners including the Times Square Alliance to ensure a safe and enjoyable event for all there will be thousands of uniform police officers including the 631 officers that graduated this morning from the police academy right here in the city our special operations our counterterrorism units our canine units

Will be deployed all throughout Time Square and throughout the city there will be a large contingency of officers you won’t see as well many in plane clothes ensuring the safety of our city and watching overhead will be our Aviation unit and our drone deployment package if you’re joining us here in

Times Square the crossroad Crossroads of the world I encourage you to use public transportation we will be got into one of our pin where our police officers will be there that will be wanding everyone for safety just a reminder again no backpacks no duffel bags large packages no alcohol these are all

Prohibited items but our officers will be there and they will be there to protect you our NYPD officers will be keeping everyone in attended safe so you can celebrate ringing in the new year in the greatest city in the world so with that I wish you all a happy and

Prosperous new year we’ll see you this weekend and if you’re looking for any more information you can tune in to our social media Pages at NYPD news you can look at the Midtown South pron page the Manhattan South burrow uh burrow commands page they will all be updated

With more information about this weekend so thank you all all right our next speaker is our partner in friend president of the Times Square Alliance Mr Tom Harris thank you very much thank you Chief Madre and thank you mayor Adams I was looking at some of our pedestrian

Counts from two years ago when mayor Adams took office and we were averaging 150,000 people per day in Time Square our hotels were only at 38% thanks to the the work of the Adams Administration we’re regularly welcoming over 300,000 people a day and our hotels are in the

High 80s low 90s and a lot of weekends they’re sold out so thank you very much May Adams you don’t get enough credit for all that’s right in the city we’re here to talk about New Year’s Eve uh we are very happy to welcome everyone back

To Time Square this year two years ago before mayor Adams came in it was a reduced crowd we are expecting hundreds of thousands of people in Time Square this year and thanks to the hard work of the men and women of the New York City Police Department they will have a safe

Experience so we have a great show we have 11 live performances in Time Square the show is going to start at 6:00 at night and end at 12:15 and again shout out to the members of the New York City Police Department and all the city agencies that we’ll make sure that

Everyone has a safe fantastic experience thank you all right with that we’ll take some on topic security questions for New Year’s Eve and then I’ll direct you to somebody on our leadership team that can that can answer CBS This is for uh mayor Adams um Mr Mayor we SE protest Mr

The B Thanksgiving Day Parade protest disrupt theor tree lighting out the same thing will happen again JY well um you know this department experienced uh you know well over a thousand protests uh uh several hundred um over 400 since October 7th uh and unlike other municipalities the ability to make these

Protests as peaceful as possible they were successful in doing so uh we have witnessed that there’s a small number of people who are trying to embed themselves and some of the protest and bring about disruption it’s not going to be tolerated it’s not going to be

Accepted uh this is a city where we’re clear there’s no room for hate and there’s no room for uh uh breaking laws you break the law you’re going to have to deal with the New York City Police Department in the process of the New York City Police Department did an

Amazing job during the tree lighting uh with uh individuals trying to disrupt the tree lighting they executed a wellth out plan and they going to do so this time as well U we people are going to come here bring in a New Year enjoy themselves in a safe way and those who

Want to peacefully protest they have the right to do so but you’re not going to do at the expense of disrupting Those Who coming here to peacefully bring in a new year you may a year ago many people we talked with here said they feel very safe coming to your de

Make that clear off the top was pointed out to that last year outside of the the security Zone there was attack is that having any impact on plan this year particularly outside of the per well I I think that you know if ever you want to see a well executed uh law

Enforcement apparatus uh that’s a perfect example you had a individual who assaulted two police officers and at the same time we were minutes away from one of the largest events of this city uh would host uh and the police responded accordingly the necessary person Personnel responded to the threat they

Terminated the threat and remaining police agency they knew what their assignments were what their posts were and they made sure that they did not allow that threat to take their attention away from that we looked at that uh Deputy Mayor Banks um spoke with the uh police department personnel we

Did an evaluation we’re going to make sure we continue to be laser focused not to be distracted when you have a threat of that magnitude CU this person assaulted police officers so there’s a natural uh muscle memory that you want to respond to that but you saw really

Just the opposite you saw a well professional trained police department and uh inspector Wier uh and uh the entire team over at Intel uh they are monitoring all the usual chatter and the suspect and as the chief stated there there are no specific threats to the

City but as we saw last year you don’t have to have a specific threat to get a threat and we’re going to be ready to respond to that threat Morales what’s Happ let me let me give it to the often quoted Chief shell I guess I got to come up with a

New quote uh just like our police office there at the tree lighting they did a great job that night of keeping protesters out from a lawful assembly from a lawful Behavior so we’re going to we’re going to mirror that with some changes but our cops will do just a

Great job as the tree line to keep them off our perimeter and the celebration continue for 2024 just to Circle back on the protest question uh real quick do you have any sense of how large You’re Expecting these protests to be and then um separately on a different matter Mr

Mayor that relates to protests earlier in the week we were talking about the NYPD settlement that related to that 2020 lawsuit you were saying um you’ve always considered that a very troubling settlement in terms of law enforcement activity and protests when the city entered that settlement though you

Actually you pred the settlement and said it struck the right balance so I’m just wondering kind of what changed there why didn’t you change your mind about well cuz people exploit the intention of allowing individuals uh to peacefully protest I think that people exploit that and we’re

Seeing some of that exploitation now and when you do an analysis of it uh although you’re not allowed to block the bridges and prevent pedestrian movement uh you’re saying when you have 5,000 people deciding to block the bridge and all you can do is issue them a

Summon uh I think it’s an encourages Behavior to be disruptive in the city and I don’t want to ever encourage Behavior to be disruptive in the city who’s going to talk about the so I mean the C the groups that have regularly uh protested in regards to

Israel Palestine have been th000 to two to 5,000 on occasion and uh you know we’re prepared for them at any number we’re prepared for different groups from different places and you know we will make sure this event stays safe and Peaceful ABC so we’re expanding our Zone from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue from 41st Street to 57th Street that gives us a buffer zone so we can move quickly if we have to like last year and also gives us a uh a space between protesters not to come in

Here this is just for anyone the NYPD how important is it to monitor the social media book break from some of these different protesters or just people who might be coming out here on social so so we monitor social media 365 days a year to just determine any event

In the city and and obviously when you have a crowd of a million people coming to a location it’s vital and it’s part of what we do every day and uh we work with all our partners a lot of people have eyes on it just to make sure that

We’re we’re watching all the different platforms you have anybody posting about you know possible protest have You’ seen that already and then what do you do you see it pop up there’s there’s a protest every day in New York city so there’s certainly going to be a protest on

Us what type of technology is new this year and being implemented forun uh the best Cas you want to go into that we’re going to use the um same footprint that we did for the tree lighting we’re going to have um two Drone trucks strategically parked along

Uh the uh actual New Year’s Eve uh festivities and we’re going to have drones deployed around the Outer Perimeter so we can monitor the protest and uh uh potential protests that are coming in real time these drones uh give us the ability to get a bird’s eye view

Of exactly what’s going on and it gives us an ability for the leadership team here you see behind me a front row seats to the uh evolving incidents that that may take place thank you anybody else on topic just one one quick uh where’s commissioner kaban I’m noticing he’s not

Here today uh he uh was in uh Dominican Republic uh he’ll be here tomorrow and he was doing uh several agreements down there but he will be back to tomorrow but you know I say this over and over again if the police department could only function when the police

Commissioner is here we’re in trouble this is a well oil machine one person does not run the show in this city and this city and the police department functions everyone knows their roles everyone knows their responsibility right now we have the first Deputy Commissioner that’s in charge and we

Have an amazing apparatus in place this this is a professional Department you don’t need one person uh to make sure that things have run smoothly and we look forward to having commissioner kaban uh back uh tomorrow anything else this be our last CNN How prevent I mean listen this is this is part of our business and we have to be prepared for everything so with loan with for tax it’s really about our training how we address our officers to make sure that they’re alert and prepared um we saw this happen last year

We were concerned about a lot of things and of all things that could possibly happen that’s what happened but we’re ready this year we’ve talked about it we’ve trained on it and officers are aware they’re aware they’ll be heads up um we ex expanded our zone for better

Safety and Security and it’s all going to play into uh into uh the safety of that night good all right thanks everybody this concludes our press conference we’re looking forward to a safe and prosperous 2024 thank you for coming out now

Watch as NYC Mayor Eric Adams speaks about the city’s New Year’s security preparations.

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