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2 November 2016—
The 2016 TCS New York City Marathon is on Sunday, and the Election Day is on Tuesday. Is the City prepared for these days?
“The NYPD is more than ready” answered Mayor Bill de Blasio.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill hosted a press conference on Tuesday, Nov 1st to discuss crime statistics.
“Yes, I feel the City is absolutely prepared for the marathon. I feel we’re prepared for election night, which will obviously be a very special and unusual night in this city. We’ve been over the details of the preparation quite a bit and I feel like the NYPD is more than ready and, obviously, in the case for election night closely coordinating with the Secret Service as well,” said the Mayor.
Commissioner O’Neill: Chief Gomez could speak a little bit more about marathon and Election Day.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner James O’Neill and NYPD Chief of Department Carlos Gomez at a press conference.
NYPD Chief of Department Carlos Gomez took the microphone: “Sure. For the marathon, we’ve been preparing for several months now. We’ve had several meetings with the organizers, and, as the Mayor said, in about 30 minutes we’re going to have a tabletop exercise on the eighth floor. We’ll go over scenarios that are designed to maybe disrupt the event and how would we react.
But every year, 50,000 runners and over two-and-a-half million spectators have some starting times – the professional women they start at 9:20, the professional men, they start at 9:50, and those with disabilities start before that. Many layers of security, you’ll see our uniform officers – they number in the thousands. I don’t like to give specific numbers along the route, but they will also be officers in plainclothes mixing in with the crowds to detect any suspicious activity. We have heavy weapons teams along the route and they will be mobile. They won’t be stationary; ESU, CRC and the SRG, the Counterterrorism Bureau will have officers with radiation detecting devices. We have explosive detecting canines. It’s all hands on deck. We have aviation and we certainly, with that many spectators and two million sets of eyes, certainly if they see something alert an officer. There won’t be an officer too far away; call 9-1-1 or if it’s before the event you have the terrorism hotline, 888-NYC-SAFE. So, we look to have a safe event.”
They also talked and answered questions about the Election Day.
Commissioner O’Neill: We have police officers assigned to every polling site in the City. Chief Monahan can talk about Election Day coverage.
Chief of Patrol Terry Monahan: Again, for the polling sites – its 1,205 polling sites citywide. We have multiple police officers. There will be over a couple of thousands police officers assigned specifically to those polling sites. Anytime you’re entering a polling site there will be at least one, if not more police officers at that site. We’ve done this every year and, again, it will be done again this year.
Mayor: And let me just add, we won’t tolerate any voter intimidation. So, if we, obviously, our officers are prepared if there is any systematic effort to disrupt it.
Mayor added: if someone were to come in with partisan material, which you’re not allowed to do.”
Chief Monahan: Again, these officers at the polling sites they – available to them are election inspectors, people from the Board of Elections as well as our legal bureau that is just a phone call away. Any issues that arise we expect the officer to call the supervisor and if they are not sure of what course of action to take, we’ll check with our legal bureau and we’ll be advised as to what to do.
Photos © h. nazan ışık / NKENdiKEN
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