Heavy Police Presence Planned for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

As an expected three million spectators turn their eyes skyward on Thursday morning, police sharpshooters on rooftops will be peering down for any signs of trouble at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In addition to Snoopy and SpongeBob floating overhead, there will be mobile cameras and police helicopters, specially trained police dogs sniffing for traces of explosives and officers patrolling on horseback, said James P. O’Neill, the New York Police Department’s chief of department, its highest-ranking uniformed officer.

Observation posts, staffed by officers from the elite Emergency Service Unit, will be watching for suspicious activity; officers will use radiation detectors to seek out evidence of a dirty bomb; and teams of plainclothes officers will mix unobtrusively with revelers spread along the two and a half miles of the Manhattan parade route between 9 a.m. and noon. 

“There will be a lot of police presence,” said Chief O’Neill, outlining elements of the department’s security measures at a briefing this week. 

“Things the public will see and, of course, things the public will not see,” he said. “All of this will ensure that New York City has a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving, as we do every year.”

As it has for all major public events since the Sept. 11 attacks, the department will have what the chief called a “counterterrorism overlay” to its plans. For the first time, about 200 officers outfitted with heavy body armor and long rifles from the department’s new Critical Response Command, part of its Counterterrorism Bureau, will be on patrol, Chief O’Neill said.

Behind the scenes, the department will be mining its network of global contacts for all the intelligence it can glean.

After the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in France by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, the department sent a French-speaking detective to Paris to join the one assigned there full time, said John J. Miller, the department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism. Those officers are working with other New York City detectives in Antwerp, Brussels, London and Madrid, he said, adding that, so far, what the department has learned about the Paris attacks has affirmed its approach to counterterrorism. 

“The first thing you see from Paris is these are people who included foreign fighters, who are hardened, trained and experienced,” Mr. Miller said. “They weren’t gathered up by Twitter chats, online, in Paris; they were sent there with a specific task and targets, likely from ISIS command and control, and it was a well-organized plot.”

With a record parade crowd expected, William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, said there would be more officers on duty than in the past. He encouraged people to “come on down” to see the parade, free from the anxieties the Paris attacks have sown, and to pitch in as extra eyes for law enforcement.

“There is no threat being directed against the parade,” Mr. Bratton said.

Joshua Campbell, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, echoed that, saying in an email, “There remains no specific or credible threat to the homeland.”..

Putting these times in context, Mr. Bratton recalled growing up in the 1950s, “when the big fear was nuclear annihilation,” but the precautionary exercises proved more ominous. 

“I can still remember running into the basement of the school building, picking at the asbestos lining on the pipes,” he said, as members of his command staff chuckled. “Back in those days, probably getting more danger out of the asbestos than the nuclear attack.”