An army of cops — backed by bomb-sniffing dogs, drones, and more than 200 blocker vehicles — will blanket New York City's Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebration, authorities said Friday.
Officials with the NYPD and FBI in New York said there are no known specific or credible threats to the annual event but urged the public to remain vigilant.
"We always have the world's best intelligence analysts and investigators monitoring the threat stream day and night," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said at a press briefing.
The NYPD will be keeping a close eye on the festivities with the help of more than 1,200 cameras, including portable devices brought to the area to add an extra layer of coverage. The camera footage will be fed to one of the NYPD's state-of-the-art intelligence centers, where officers have the ability to quickly rewind or zoom in on the numerous feeds.
In a first, the department will also be deploying its own drone to add another camera to the sky, augmenting the NYPD's helicopter fleet. The drone will be tethered to the ground and will have an area cordoned off below it to protect revelers in the event of a malfunction.
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force will also be on hand with counter-drone technology, authorities said.
The extraordinary security measures include welding shut manhole covers and embedding officers inside area hotels.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism and Intelligence John Miller said the teams of intelligence detectives will take their positions inside hotels "well before New Year's Eve."
Miller said the officers will be teamed up with hotel staff carrying master keys and allowed to spend days getting to know hotel housekeepers and other staff so they will be able to identify anyone who doesn't belong on the premises and the hotel staff knows the detectives.
Miller added that the NYPD continues to monitor the type and volume of terrorist propaganda coming from overseas, some of which references New York City specifically. But Miller noted that the amount of propaganda seen year over year has declined. He attributes the decrease in part to the disruption of the ISIS home base in the Middle East.
While New York hasn't had a terrorism incident in more than a year, Europe was hit by a terror attack this month when five people were shot dead near a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France. The suspect, Cherif Chekatt, was killed in a shootout with police following a two-day manhunt.
