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.”

Happy Thanksgiving a message from Norm Pattis

It’s Thanksgiving. You’re at home, or with loved ones, or perhaps alone, hopefully savoring some time away from the workaday world and its troubles. Or perhaps your sorrows are such that they know no surcease: care may weigh you down even today. Maybe you’re at work.

But I say, to one and all, Happy Thanksgiving.

It is still safe to be grateful, isn’t it?

We’re well past that point in the nation’s history when we can say, without irony, as John Winthrop did in 1630, that we are a shining city on a hill, a model to the world, God’s providential patch of righteousness. We’ve come of age in a world forever coming apart; our seams are showing.

We’re still divided on matters of race. And new divisions now compete for the mantle of righteousness. Collegians have discovered “microaggressions” in every slip of the tongue, and campuses simmer over slights real and imagined.

As of this writing, police officers have shot dead 883 people throughout the land thus far this year. Although only 30 of these folk have been unarmed black men, each new shooting of a person of color rips the scab from the wound we call race. Minneapolis is tense; Chicago is tense; Baltimore erupted. Each generation anew finds a way to decry our sordid racial history. Terrorists strut the Earth boasting of their capacity to destroy and longing for the taste of our blood on our soil. Our doors, once open, stand ajar. While some remain committed to a welcoming tradition, others, myself included, wonder whether now is the time to slow down, take stock and end the fantasy that good will is enough to see us through the darkest nights.

And of wars, and rumors of war? The world does not disappoint. Turkey shoots a Russian fighter jet from the sky. Two powerful nations stand on the cusp of violence. A tense world watches, and prepares for a larger conflict we hope will never come.

Americans are suddenly warned about traveling worldwide. Malefactors are on the hunt; we’re targets, after all, in this the best of all possible worlds.

But still, I say, there is ample room for gratitude, and the giving of thanks.

I won’t recount the shopworn story of pilgrims at Plymouth, of Squanto, the native American, emerging from a dark wood to lend a helping, and saving, hand. In a politically correct era, the story is suspect, isn’t it? We stole the land; we slaughtered the first inhabitants.

Let me off history’s wheel for just this once. I tire of the righteous. It sometimes seems as though the most original sin of all is the demand to remake the world in our own image. Isn’t it enough simply to be grateful for the warmth of a good meal and for people who love us, despite our failings?

Today, I give thanks for many things: for good health, for work that sustains, for people who love me despite my many failings, for a judicial system that lurches along with a vision of perfection it fails to meet but strives to satisfy.

I wish the prisons were open to the public. Today would be a good day to share a meal with a prisoner. I think of the men and women I’ve met over the years: some sinners, others far from saints, all made of the same clay. Their groans of despair weigh heavily on a day like today. Do you give thanks when serving life without possibility of parole?

One of the men who has most influenced me is serving such a sentence. I will not mention his name. From time to time, I drop in on him to say hello. His case has been over now for many years. He’s a convicted murderer, and, barring a miracle, will never walk the streets a free man.

“I don’t get it,” I said to him once. “You’ve lost everything, yet you are more at peace than anyone I know.”

He smiled, unfolding his tattooed arms, and leaning back in the plastic chair of the holding cell.

“They have my body,” he said. “But they will never have my mind. I am free,”

He told me that five years ago. I recall it as though it were yesterday.

Necessity has not reduced me to such a stark form of stoicism; I am no Epictetus. But isn’t there some truth in what he said? The prisoner, my friend, possesses dignity.

Ours is an era of identity politics. We profess great regard for the rights of individuals, but, increasingly, demand our due based on the group to which we belong. Everyone’s lives suddenly matter. The press of demands makes the world a mad carousel. It’s exhausting to catalogue, much less honor, all the claims for recognition, validation, and justice.

Thanksgiving day is a good day to refocus, to recalibrate.

I’ll be sharing a meal with family and assorted friends. Across the table from me and beside me will be seated people of differing political persuasions, different gender politics, different sexual orientations. For just a couple of hours, I am hoping that all talk of politics will be banished.

I want simply to pass a boat of gravy to my left, to slice a piece of pie to my right, to sit back and listen to the hum of other’s speaking without needing to defend, to justify, to reason, or even to care all that much about anything but life’s ordinary pleasures.

Thanksgiving is a day of simple truths, of respect for the man, woman or child seated at the table we share in common. Simple human connections make the day special. It is a holiday, a reprieve, from the mad press of politics.

Today, I am giving thanks for many things, you among them. My hope is that if you read this, you accept a hand offered in goodwill. We don’t always agree; indeed, most days I glory in provocation — it’s how I am made.

But not today. Today the message is simple: Happy Thanksgiving.

Norm Pattis, a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer with an office in New Haven, blogs at www.pattisblog.com. His new book, “In the Trenches,” is available on Amazon.

The Good Dinosaur is Pixar's most disappointing film

Note that it's not the "worst" — it's technically accomplished, visually stunning, and certainly better than Cars 2, at the very least.



But even though Pixar and the prehistoric era should have been a natural fit, The Good Dinosaur is hollow on a storytelling level, mostly cobbled together from other, better sources. It feels like a patchworked compilation of a dozen screenplay drafts (complete with five people credited for coming up with the film's "story" — the outline that eventually becomes a full script).

This reflects the film's troubled production process, during which its original director, Bob Peterson, was removed in 2013 and replaced with current director Peter Sohn. While Pixar has survived such directorial shake-ups before (most notably on the sublime Ratatouille), it's evident from the earliest that nobody ever quite knew what The Good Dinosaur was supposed to be.



If there's a reason to give The Good Dinosaur a mild recommendation (and I give it the very mildest of recommendations), it's the film's visual excellence. You'll see plenty of reviews that highlight the photorealism of the movie's scenic backgrounds (taken from real US Geological Survey data of the American West!). However, while they're certainly far more naturalistic than anything Pixar has done before, saying they're photorealistic is not quite accurate. No, these are the grand vistas of the West as we might expect them to look, with every single beam of sunlight carefully positioned and every shrub artfully placed. The whole thing has the feel of a landscape painter tweaking nature just so.

These backdrops mesh well with the film's more stylized and cartoon-y main characters, beings that were very obviously generated by a computer. Something about the bright green main dinosaur Arlo moving across such precisely maintained landscapes just works, and that's to say nothing of the film's other neat visual flourishes, like a shot of pteranodon wings cutting through clouds like shark fins cresting above the sea.

Unfortunately, these sumptuous images don't entirely carry through to the story's visual logic. The center of The Good Dinosaur's plot involves Arlo being swept far from home after an accident. He'll have to embark on a long journey back, a trip that will comprise the bulk of the film's running time. So far, so good.

But Sohn and company never give us any real sense of Arlo's trek. It's fine if we don't know how exactly how far he is from home, but it's a problem if we can't get any real sense of how far he's traveled. That's the sort of thing that can easily be conveyed visually — via geography, or even simple landmarks. Yet, by the time Arlo gets within spitting distance of home, it's hard to figure out how much ground he's covered — or if he arrives when he does simply because it's time for the movie to end.

However, this is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of the film. Far more egregious is the fact that The Good Dinosaur ripped off many, many other movies in hopes of coming up with a coherent story.

Russian 'antique' falls to tricked-out F16s

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also appealed to Turkey and Russia to reduce tensions.



Ban hopes "a credible and thorough review will clarify the events and help prevent future recurrences," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"He urges all those who are engaged in military activities in Syria, especially air campaigns, to maximize operational measures to avoid unintended consequences," Dujarric said.

Turkey shot down the Russian warplane near the Syrian border, saying the jet had violated its airspace, in one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century.

But Putin said the plane had been attacked when it was 1 km (0.62 mile) inside Syria and warned of "serious consequences" for what he termed a stab in the back administered by "the accomplices of terrorists".

"We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today," Putin said

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Turkish U.N. Ambassador Halit Cevik said two planes approached Turkish airspace on Tuesday morning and were warned 10 times in five minutes to change direction.

Cevik said both planes then flew more than a mile into Turkey for 17 seconds. He said the nationality of the planes was unknown.

Meanwhile, the Turkish President said in a speech in Ankara: "Nobody should doubt that we made our best efforts to avoid this latest incident. But everyone should respect the right of Turkey to defend its borders."

In condemnation of Russian air strikes in Syria, during which Turkish air space has been violated several times in recent weeks, Erdogan said that only Turkey's "cool-headedness" had prevented worse incidents in the past.

Russian and Turkish ministers to meet over downed jet

The foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey have spoken to each other about Tuesday's downing of the Russian military jet, deciding to meet in the coming days to discuss the situation on Turkey's border with Syria.

Describing the shooting down of the jet Tuesday as a "planned act", Russia's Sergey Lavrov said the incident could not go without reaction, according to news wires.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke by phone with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, agreeing to meet in the coming days, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters.

"In their discussion, agreement was reached to share details on the matter via diplomatic and military channels," spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in an e-mailed statement seen by Reuters.


News of the conversation came after Russia announced it was planning to strengthen its military base in Syria by installing an air defense system in Syria and vowed to continue airstrikes near Turkey's border.

Russia's decision to continue risky operations close to the Syria-Turkey border, reportedly on rebel groups who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad, comes despite the downing of one of its warplanes by Turkey on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed Turkey's actions, which led to the death of one of the Russian pilots, and said Moscow would send an S-400 air defense system to a Russian airbase in Syria "to ensure the safety of our flights."

Despite the SU-24 fighter jet being shot down on the Turkey-Syria border, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the country would continue airstrikes near the Turkish border, Reuters reported.

The SU-24 warplane downed Tuesday was believed to have been targeting an anti-Assad rebel group, which is supported by Turkey.

"We would like for the terrorists and militants to keep further away from the Turkish border, but unfortunately they tend to be situated on the Syrian territory close to the Turkish border," Peskov told journalists on a conference call.

The latest comments from Putin come amid a war of words between Turkey and Russia with Turkey's prime minister reiterating earlier comments from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey wouldn't hesitate to defend itself.

Erdogan had tried to calm tensions between Turkey and Russia on Wednesday, saying Turkey did not want any escalation after it shot down the Russian fighter jet, but said Turkey had acted simply to defend its own security and the "rights of our brothers" in Syria.

Speaking at business event in Istanbul, Erdogan said the jet had been fired at while in Turkish airspace but had crashed inside Syria, although some parts of the plane landed in Turkey and injured two Turkish citizens.

Earlier, the U.S. said it believed that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said that assessment was based on detection of the heat signature of the jet.

Following Erdogan's comments on Wednesday, Putin also slammed Turkey's leadership, saying it deliberately supported the "Islamisation" of its country, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

The White House said that U.S. President Barack Obama and Erdogan spoke by phone on Tuesday about the need to de-escalate tensions with Russia.

Obama expressed "U.S. and NATO support for Turkey's right to defend its sovereignty," the White House said in a statement.

"The leaders agreed on the importance of de-escalating the situation and pursuing arrangements to ensure that such incidents do not happen again," the statement said.

Four vie for Pima College board seat that Longoria vacated

Four hopefuls including a former state lawmaker are in the running to fill the latest vacancy on Pima Community College’s Governing Board.

The application deadline closed at 5 p.m. Tuesday to fill the board’s District 2 seat after the recent resignation of David Longoria, who left town for a job in Phoenix.

The District 2 residents who applied to replace Longoria until the end of 2016 include:

Georgia Brousseau, a retired elementary school principal with Tucson Unified School District and former PCC board member.

Demion Clinco, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives who leads the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation.

Miguel Cuevas, a former TUSD board member and operations manager of local call center AFNI Inc.

Rene Teyechea, a teacher at Desert View High School.

Pima County Schools Superintendent Linda Arzoumanian is responsible for appointing a replacement board member and is assembling an advisory group to help her screen the candidates, said Ricky Hernandez, the school superintendent’s spokesman.

The advisory group will include representatives from the business community and PCC employee groups.

Arzoumanian hopes to have a new board member in place by the end of December, Hernandez said.

How to Keep Safe from the Deadly Kissing Bug

To keep your home safe, the CDC recommends:




sealing all cracks and gaps around windows, walls, roofs, and doors and screens

checking in and around your pet's bedding

removing wood, brush, and rock piles near your home

turning off outdoor lights at night, which attract bugs.

Kissing bugs are hard to kill - typical bug sprays do not work. Instead, trap the bug in a jar and drown it in rubbing alcohol or freeze it in water to kiss the kissing bug goodbye.