In terror-wary NYC, security tight for Thanksgiving parade
NEW YORK — Sand-filled sanitation trucks and police sharpshooters will mix with glittering floats and giant balloons at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that comes in a year of terrible mass shootings and not even a month after a deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan.
New York City’s mayor and police brass have repeatedly stressed that layers of security, along with hundreds of officers, will be in place for one of the nation’s biggest outdoor holiday gatherings, and that visitors should not be deterred.
“We had a couple of tough months as a nation,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill said. “We won’t ever accept such acts of hate and cowardice as inevitable in our society.”
A posting last year in an English-language magazine of the Islamic State group, which took credit for the Oct. 31 truck attack that killed eight people, mentioned the Thanksgiving parade as “an excellent target.” Authorities say there is no confirmation of a credible threat.