Security Is Tight for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Security and police presence are at an all time high this year as New York City prepares for its annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, as well as several high ranking members of the NYPD, have made statements attesting to the strenuous security measures at the event this year.

Officials say that the officers walking among the crowd this year will be armed with assault weapons, and portable radiation detectors. Sharpshooters will be positioned on rooftops to scan the crowd and street-facing windows for possible threats.

In addition, sanitation trucks fully loaded with sand will stand as a barrier at all cross streets along the parade route. The trucks — each of which weigh 16 tons while empty — will hopefully deter the car-crash style of terrorist attack that has unfortunately become so common this year.

Reportedly, the tightened security is in part a reaction to the Islamic State Group, who took credit for the horrific traffic attack in Lower Manhattan less than a month ago. Last year, a post connected to the organization in an English-language magazine referred to the Thanksgiving day parade as “an excellent target,” though so far there’s no concrete evidence of a threat.

Aside from the attacks within the city, the nation as a whole has been on edge. Mass tragedies have plagued our country for years, but they seem especially prominent in the past few months.

“We had a couple of tough months as a nation,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill told reporters from the Associate Press. “We won’t ever accept such acts of hate and cowardice as inevitable in our society.”