Kerry Warns Violence in Mideast Could ‘Spin Out of Control’

After talks in Israel and the West Bank aimed at calming tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday the situation is reaching a pivotal point and that the two sides must take immediate steps so the violence doesn’t “spin out of control.”

“Both sides have important decisions to make for the future and we obviously hope they make the choices that will advance the prospects for lasting peace,” he told reporters traveling with him at the end of a three-day trip to the Middle East that included his first visit to Israel and the West Bank in over a year. 

The U.S. is urging the two sides to avoid provocative actions, including Israeli construction of new settlements and Palestinian incitement to violence. Mr. Kerry traveled to the Mideast on Tuesday to try to ease tensions amid a two-month wave of violence sparked by clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at a holy site in Jerusalem. 

But divisions remain between the U.S. and Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days announced tough new security measures for Palestinians in the West Bank and demanded in his meeting with Mr. Kerry on Tuesday that the U.S. recognize settlement construction in the West Bank in exchange for Israeli steps to calm tensions there. 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner indicated that the U.S. answer to it is “a big no.” 

“The U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them and by extension does not pursue policies that would legitimize them,” Mr. Toner said Tuesday, without confirming Mr. Netanyahu’s demand. “And administrations of both parties have long recognized that settlement activity and efforts to change the facts on the ground undermine the goal of a two-state solution.” 

Mr. Kerry met with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Tuesday and later with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Mr. Kerry condemned the violent attacks by Palestinians against Israelis and said Israel has “every right in the world to defend itself.” 

After his meeting with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Kerry said he knows “that the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza is, at this moment, very dire." 

“There are extraordinary concerns, obviously, about the violence,” he added. He said he was dispatched to Israel and the West Bank by President Barack Obama to try to restore calm as well as public confidence in the viability of a two-state solution. 

“We are committed to that, two states with two peoples living side by side in peace and security,” he said. 

The White House has given up on reaching a comprehensive settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians before President Obama leaves office in 2017, and peace talks are unlikely to restart before then. Mr. Kerry and his aides were careful to stress that this week’s trip wasn’t aimed at getting either side back to the table.  

The violence continued as Mr. Kerry was in Israel and the West Bank. 

On Wednesday, a Palestinian attacked and stabbed a soldier near the West Bank city of Hebron, before security forces shot the assailant, Israeli military said. Both the soldier and the attacker were evacuated to hospital, where the Palestinian died from his wounds, Israeli health authorities said. 

In total, Palestinians have killed 19 Israelis since Oct. 1, according to Israeli authorities. Israeli security forces have killed at least 80 Palestinians, the majority of whom were shot dead while allegedly attacking Israelis. 

Mr. Netanyahu said this week he was authorizing beefing up security in the West Bank, stopping more cars and deploying additional forces. The Israeli government would also revoke work permits of Palestinian assailants’ family members who were eligible to work in Israel, he said.

The violence has ensnared some Americans, including Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old Yeshiva student from Mr. Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts, who was shot dead last week in the West Bank.

Mr. Kerry mentioned him twice by name while in Israel. Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama placed condolence calls to his family this week.

The most recent round of violence began after clashes at the Temple Mount complex, known to Muslims at Haram Al-Sharif

Mr. Kerry last met with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas in October in Berlin and Amman, Jordan, respectively, and will continue talks to calm tensions in coming weeks. He had pursued a nine-month peace process earlier in his tenure as secretary of state but it fell apart in April 2014.

Mr. Kerry last month helped broker a deal between Israeli and Jordanian officials to install security cameras at Temple Mount, for which technical talks are ongoing.

NFL great Frank Gifford had degenerative brain disease, family announces

Frank Gifford, the Pro Football Hall of Famer and USC All-American who died of natural causes in August, suffered from a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, his family announced Wednesday.

The family said in a statement that pathologists who studied Gifford's brain after he died at age 84 found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, better known as CTE.

"We decided to disclose our loved one's condition to honor Frank's legacy of promoting player safety dating back to his involvement in the formation of the NFL Players Association in the 1950s," the statement said. "His entire adult life Frank was a champion for others, but especially for those without the means or platform to have their voices heard."

Gifford is the latest in a string of high-profile NFL players to be diagnosed with CTE. The disease, which can be confirmed only after death, has been found in other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including Junior Seau, John Mackey and Mike Webster.

Eighty-seven of the 91 brains from deceased NFL players studied by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University showed signs of CTE. 

I do think that Mr. Gifford is a very important case for awareness," said Chris Nowinski, executive director of the Boston University-affiliated Concussion Legacy Foundation. "The family didn't have to do this study to explain away behaviors or actions. They truly did it to raise awareness because they silently suffered."

Nowinski said his organization wasn't involved in testing Gifford's brain.

Dr. Russell Lonser, a member of the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee and chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Ohio State University, believes more research about CTE is needed. 

"There are critical questions that are unanswered," he said. "There's clearly a heightened awareness, and it's important to move research and understanding 

 

In a statement, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said: "The health and safety of our players remains our highest priority. We have more work to do — work that honors great men like Frank Gifford." 

During 12 NFL seasons, Gifford made the Pro Bowl eight times at three different positions — defensive back, running back and flanker. But the image that lingered from his professional career was the violent tackle by Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik, another Hall of Famer, in 1960. The blow knocked out Gifford and forced him to sit out a season to fully recover. 

After Gifford's playing career, he gained notoriety for his low-key role as the evenhanded play-by-play announcer for "Monday Night Football," a program on which he worked for 27 years. 

"During the last years of his life Frank dedicated himself to understanding the recent revelations concerning the connection between repetitive head trauma and its associated cognitive and behavioral symptoms — which he experienced firsthand," the family's statement said. "We ... find comfort in knowing that by disclosing his condition we might contribute positively to the ongoing conversation that needs to be had ... that we might be a small part of the solution to an urgent problem concerning anyone involved with football, at any level." 

An NFL-commissioned actuarial report last year projected that about 3 in 10 retired players will develop serious neurocognitive problems such as Alzheimer's disease or dementia. 

In April, a federal judge granted final approval to a settlement between the NFL and retired players in long-running concussion litigation against the league. The deal, which compensates some players on a sliding scale for various diseases, is on hold pending appeal. 

The families of players diagnosed with CTE after death prior to the deal's final approval could be eligible for up to $4 million depending on seasons in the league, age at diagnosis and other factors. The agreement doesn't compensate for CTE after the deadline, one of the points of contention in the appeal.

The news about Gifford left Garrett Webster, son of late Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Mike Webster, wondering when the tragedy will end.

The longtime Steelers standout, who died from a heart attack at age 50 in 2002 after years of erratic behavior, was the first NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE. Despite a slew of NFL rule changes, concussion protocols and studies in recent years, his son doesn't believe enough has changed.

"I used to think that donating your brain was helping the game become much safer, but now I believe the NFL just does not care," he wrote in an email Wednesday.

Gifford's family said in the statement that it will continue to support the NFL and its initiatives aimed at making football safer.

Al Michaels, who worked with Gifford for 12 years in the “Monday Night Football” booth, said he was saddened Wednesday to hear the news but never suspected his colleague’s ailment.

“I saw the best of Frank,” Michaels said. “You never know what’s going on in somebody’s brain. Frank was always there, always ready, always prepared. There isn’t a single person in the world who isn’t going to stumble on something from time to time, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

Michaels said, however, that Gifford did not appreciate any jokes or lighthearted comments about the Bednarik hit. 

“The one thing that Frank was never pleased with on any level was he felt that Bednarik dined out on that thing for a lot of years,” he said. “Bednarik would be at banquets, and he’d be the one that `rang Frank Gifford’s bell, put him out for a year,’ and all that nonsense. That was at a time when you could kind of make jokes like that. But Frank never saw any humor in that, and of course nobody sees any humor in it anymore.”

Pope Francis Arrives in a Kenya Fed Up With Graft

Pope Francis is known for his humility, but many Kenyans still could not believe what they saw him do when he arrived in Nairobi on Wednesday: He drove in from the airport in a little gray Honda



The Kenyan bigwigs in the official motorcade from the airport rode in polished Mercedes and fancy four-by-fours, but the pope waved to the crowds from the back seat of what one Kenyan newspaper dubbed a “lowly miniature Honda car.”

“His ride was the kind of car Kenya’s affluent would not even accept in the exclusive membership clubs or the leafy gated communities,” a Kenyan newspaper, The Standard, said within minutes of the pope’s arrival.

Nairobi is the first stop on a three-nation tour, his first visit to Africa as pope, that will also take Francis to Uganda and the Central African Republic. The pope said he wanted to spread a message of peace and reconciliation. 

What’s the mood?” said Bishop Anthony Muheria. “It’s electric.”

The 78-year-old pontiff is going to have a busy five days in Africa. His schedule is packed with meetings, red-carpet receptions, arrival ceremonies, farewell ceremonies and a Mass on Thursday for as many as one million people.

Kenyans are fed up with the excesses of their political class — five government ministers were fired this week in connection with allegations of graft — and many said they hoped the pope would talk about it. 

Francis did not address the subject directly in his short, upbeat speech Wednesday night at State House, Kenya’s equivalent of the White House. But he did say, to a burst of applause: “The Gospel tells us that from those to whom much has been given, much will be demanded. In that spirit, I encourage you to work with integrity and transparency for the common good.” 

More than other recent popes, Francis has cast himself as a champion of the poor. As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, he rode a public bus to work and often walked in the city’s slums. 

Africa is by far the world’s poorest continent, and many Kenyans are touched that Francis plans to spend Friday morning in the Kangemi slum, a huge informal settlement of flimsy metal shacks, broken dreams and open sewage trickling across the ground. 

“The people here never expected this,” said the Rev. Paschal Mwijage, who leads a church in Kangemi. “Even now,” he said on Wednesday afternoon, “they still don’t believe the pope’s coming.” One child from the slum said she was too excited to sleep. 

Nairobi has put aside day-to-day life in expectation of the papal visit. Schools, major roads and most businesses will be closed on Thursday, an impromptu national holiday and a day of “prayer and reflection.” Hundreds of thousands of Catholics are streaming into the city from all corners of Kenya by bus, taxi, motorbike, even bicycle. Major hotels are fully booked, though many worshipers have chosen a cheaper option: sleeping on school floors. 

The only event here that has come close to generating this level of excitement was President Obama’s visit in July, and hopes this time are even higher. 

“The visit is a turning point in Kenya’s, and indeed Africa’s, history,” Kenya’s leading newspaper, The Daily Nation, wrote in a glowing editorial. 

The Standard, its rival, wrote that the pope “speaks a language that is understood the world over,” and added: “He speaks it to the rich and to the poor, the unreached, the unconverted, the marginalized.” 

“Our politicians,” the paper concluded, “could learn a thing or two from him.”

3 Million People Expected to Attend NYC Thanksgiving Parade

As millions of Americans prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, security will be tight in New York City with a record number of police officers patrolling the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

City officials have said there are no known, credible threats against New York following the recent attacks in Paris and a video purportedly produced by ISIS that contained video clips of Times Square.

But Police Commissioner William Bratton said more than 2,500 officers will be stationed along the parade route for the Thanksgiving Day festivities — the largest number of officers the department has ever assigned to the event. 

Officials estimate about 3 million spectators will line the streets of Manhattan to see the marching bands, musical acts and famed Rockettes. 

"I think people are coming here from all over the city, all over the metropolitan region, all over the country to be a part of this parade," Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a news conference Wednesday night. "We cannot let the terrorists succeed at psychological warfare. ... They're doing what they do to try and create fear, to try and change us."

Thousands of people gathered in Manhattan on Wednesday night to watch as the large, character balloons that have become a staple in the parade were inflated. 

Crowds were packed along the route near Central Park as balloons from SpongeBob to Snoopy and Hello Kitty were inflated and then tied down under large nets. 

The parade is now in its 89th year. 

"This begins a season of appreciation, a season to focus on family and all our loved ones," de Blasio said. "And yet, at the same time, there are some in this world who are trying to stir fear. They're trying to make us afraid. They're trying to make us change our lifestyle and change our values, lose our spirit, lose our values. We refuse to do that." 

Possible concerns about safety didn't stop Janna Schuh of Atlanta, Georgia, from showing up Wednesday night. 

"It's awesome," she said. "I've never done this before. It's on my bucket list.

Obama says U.S. is safe as millions set off on Thanksgiving travel

President Barack Obama sought to reassure Americans they were safe as millions of travellers set off for the long Thanksgiving weekend on Wednesday and authorities stepped up security at airports in response to the attacks in Paris two weeks ago.

In New York City, record-breaking crowds were expected on Thursday for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and Police Commissioner William Bratton said the city was deploying more officers at the annual event than ever before. 

"Right now, we know of no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland," Obama told reporters at the White House, two weeks after suspected Islamist militants killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in the French capital. 

"We are taking every possible step to keep our homeland safe," he said, flanked by his FBI director and other top security officials on the day before Thanksgiving, when many Americans travel to be with their extended families for a traditional turkey dinner. 

Nearly 46.9 million Americans will travel over the long Thanksgiving weekend - the busiest U.S. travel holiday of the year - with 3.6 million going by plane, according to the AAA, a motorist advocacy group. 

Most U.S. airports reported flights delays of less than 15 minutes, according to tracking websites. Passengers at airports from Washington to New York said they saw heavier than normal security, but that travel was flowing smoothly. 

Americans have become more concerned about threats since the Paris attacks and now identify terrorism as the most important problem facing the nation, Reuters-Ipsos polling shows. 

"We have to live our lives right? We're having a good time. We did a cruise and now we're doing New York City," said Karen Damaschino, 47, of San Francisco after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport to spend the holiday in New York. 

The U.S. response to Islamic State has become a top issue in the race to succeed Obama in the November 2016 presidential election. In his statement, Obama tried to allay Americans' concerns. 

"I know that families have discussed their fears about the threat of terrorism around the dinner table, many for the first time since September 11th," he said, referring to the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on New York and Washington.

But he told Americans they should "go about their usual Thanksgiving weekend activities" while remaining vigilant to any suspicious activities.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio echoed that sentiment at a news conference on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where crews were inflating the giant balloons that highlight the Macy's parade, the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. 

"One thing I always say, there are some people trying to intimidate New Yorkers. Well, New Yorkers don't get intimidated," he said. "They'll be out tomorrow in droves."

Charges against police officer in teen’s slaying don’t quell anger in Chicago

Leaders of the Chicago City Council’s black caucus called Wednesday for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to remove his police chief, Garry McCarthy, one day after authorities released a graphic video showing a white police officer fatally shooting an African American teenager last year.

Prosecutors charged the veteran officer, Jason Van Dyke, with first-degree murder on Tuesday. But the move did not defuse the anger rippling across parts of this city. Groups of protesters returned to the streets Wednesday, and parents of individuals slain by police demanded action from Emanuel’s administration.

Although demonstrations by several hundred Chicago residents remained largely peaceful as the city prepared for Thanksgiving, Emanuel and McCarthy were facing mounting questions in what has been a trying week in a very difficult year for the mayor. 

Emanuel barely escaped with a re­election victory in April, winning a second term after being forced into an unexpected runoff. Now, he is under pressure to hold Chicago police to account for excessive force and to restore his administration’s credibility amid growing public anxiety about a rise in violent crime. Chicago has recorded more than 2,700 shootings this year, more than all of 2014 — and 433 of them have been fatal. 

The mayor said he was appalled by the video, which shows Van Dyke firing at Laquan McDonald, 17, hitting him with 16 rounds, some while the teen was motionless on the ground. 

Emanuel said he fully supported McCarthy and called for calm as demonstrators demanded changes­ in police tactics.

Prominent activists urged civil disobedience in Chicago’s busiest shopping district on Friday. 

A dozen members of the council’s black caucus gathered to renew their recent calls for Emanuel to fire McCarthy, a leading voice for stricter gun regulations and a lightning rod for critics angered by the department’s history of rough policing. 

“We want McCarthy gone. We want new leadership,” Alderman Roderick Sawyer said. 

The mayor has faced criticism after resisting the release of the police video for 13 months, asserting that he did not want to prejudice the criminal investigation by the Cook County state’s attorney, Anita Alvarez. A Cook County judge ordered the release last week. 

A federal investigation of the incident is underway, “irrespective of the state charge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Fitzpatrick said, describing the probe as “very extensive.” 

Emanuel and McCarthy are in a tough spot, said Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, who credited them with taking serious approaches­ to policing in a city with a long history of economic distress and racial tension. 

“McCarthy is doing a lot of things that the progressive, ­evidence-based policing manual would say to do,” Ludwig said. “Mayor Emanuel is doing as much as any mayor I know to pay attention to things we have reason to believe are promising.”

But many, especially in the African American community, remain unconvinced. 

Several parents whose children were killed by Chicago police officers gathered outside Emanuel’s office at noon Wednesday to demand a meeting. Gloria Pinex, 48, whose 27-year-old son, Darius Pinex, was killed by police after a 2011 traffic stop in Englewood, said she is not convinced that Emanuel is serious about addressing police violence in black communities. 

“If he is really about his city, he would do something about his police officers. He is not doing his job at all,” said Pinex, who lost a civil suit against the city. “I want to see that any officer that is out here stepping over the line be indicted like anyone else. Once that starts, all this genocidal stuff happening out here will end.”

Chicago has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle negligence and brutality cases­ against police officers. In 2014, seven years after police opened fire on local rapper Freddie Latrice Wilson, hitting him 18 times during a traffic stop, the city paid $4.5 million to his family. 

Wilson’s father, Freddie McGee, 68, said Wednesday that Emanuel should meet with him and other parents of slain children to show he is taking police misconduct seriously. 

“He should get on board with us or he should leave his office. We have asked him. We have begged him. Now we have made a demand for him to talk to us. He has to make a change,” McGee said. “Had they done something in 2007, Laquan McDonald would be here today.” 

Former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said Wednesday that Emanuel finds it difficult to show that he takes police misconduct seriously. This makes him vulnerable to allegations that he fails to recognize or resolve long-standing problems within the department. 

“He hasn’t convinced much of Chicago to believe he is really empathetic,” Simpson said. “You can’t expect him to change his personality entirely, but somehow providing some sense the mayor is on the side of the citizens and the black community would be helpful in this case to lesson the violence.” 

At the same time, Chicago law enforcement is failing to keep up with the recent surge in violent crime. Many in the public are looking for Emanuel’s administration to do more. 

Last year, more than 2,500 people were hit by gunfire in this city of 2.7 million. So far this year, the figure has topped 2,700. On each of four consecutive weekends in August, 40 people were shot. The last weekend in September, the total was 57, four fatally, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

“We’ve lost our conscience, Chicago,” the Rev. Michael L. Pfleger said this month at a funeral for 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee. Police suspect that the boy’s attackers had lured him into an alley and executed him to punish his father in a gang dispute. His father denies having gang connections. 

The same day that Tyshawn was found dead, bullets intended for someone else killed Kaylyn Pryor, 20, a talented Evanston, Ill., model who was waiting for a bus after a visit with her grandmother. 

President Obama took note of this deadly violence when he visited Chicago last month. Not far from the home he still owns on the South Side, he reminded a convention of police chiefs of a “spike in violent crime in a number of predominantly urban, minority communities.” He pledged support for police, but also said the United States “can’t have a situation in which a big chunk of the population feels like maybe the system isn’t working well for them.”

Praising community policing as one tool, Obama credited Emanuel, a fellow Democrat and his first White House chief of staff, with creating partnerships with ministers and assigning more officers to bicycle and foot patrols. He also spoke of the need for greater gun regulation, a principal plea of Emanuel and McCarthy, the police chief the mayor brought in from New York in 2011. 

McCarthy inherited a police department that critics say has long engaged in excessive force. 

Data from the Citizens Police Data Project, an online portal launched this month by the Invisible Institute, suggests that the department has been slow to conclude that officers acted wrongfully and deserve punishment.

Van Dyke faced 20 citizen complaints in 14 years on the force, including several allegations of excessive force, according to the data from the project. In most cases, the complaints against Van Dyke were deemed unfounded or otherwise not sustained, according to the database, which included no evidence of disciplinary action against him.

This makes sense to Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, who said Van Dyke patrolled “some of the highest-crime areas of the city.” 

“To me, that comes with the territory,” Angelo said. “You’re putting people in jail, no one wants to go to jail, and a lot of times people complain. . . . But it’s 14 years. And he’s dealing with some extremely violent circumstances, every day, nine hours a day, for 14 years. One complaint, two complaints, three complaints a year, where’s the significance there? I don’t see it.” 

Loyola University criminologist Arthur Lurigio said Emanuel and McCarthy hardly bear the entire blame for the city’s troubled history or all episodes of violent, unprofessional or counterproductive police behavior. And yet, he said, the anger is real and answers have been slow in coming. 

“I would like the mayor to talk about systematic plans in districts where most police shootings take place,” Lurigio said. “Outrage comes, not only from that video, but from a history of tense relationships with police in those neighborhoods. Everybody knows somebody whom the police stopped.” 

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.”