Tonight is not the night for anti-police protestors to stir trouble in the Big Apple, former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik said Wednesday on “America’s Forum” on
Newsmax TV.
“Tonight's going to be an exciting night but for the NYPD it's also a very, it's an important night because of terror threats, because anything that incites internally within that crowd could cause a problem, cause a stampede,’ Kerik said of Wednesday night's New Years Eve celebration in New York's Times Square.
“So if the protesters are out there, they think they're going to do something tonight within that crowd, the NYPD's going to be extremely aggressive in taking them out of there because they can cause an enormous amount of problems and they can cause physical damage as well.”
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A group called Stop Mass Incarceration is planning a 10 p.m. march to Times Square to "Rock in the New Year With Resistance to Police Murder!"
according to Newsday. The New York Daily News reports that more than 190 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide are
expected to watch the ball drop.
Depending on the weather, between 500,000 and 2 million revelers are expected to ring in the New Year in the Times Square area of the city, Kerik said.
“They're spread out on Seventh Avenue and Broadway from the heart of Times Square, which is 44th Street, all the way up to 57th and down to 34th, and then from Sixth Avenue over to Eighth Avenue,” he said. “It's a lot of people. The NYPD does a tremendous job in corralling them off, keeping them in frozen zones, stopping movement in certain areas.”
Up to 4,000 police officers, in addition to a sizeable counter-terrorism contingent, will be in the area, according to Kerik.
While protestors have the right to demonstrate, if they “in any way” pose a physical threat to an area “they're going to have to be taken out of there,” Kerik warned.
“They have to stay very aggressive with these protesters if they go out there and they start stirring havoc or … inciting the crowd,” he said. “You incite a crowd of a half a million people to 2 million, you start a stampede, somebody's going to get hurt and possibly killed. So they have to stay on top of it.”
The discord between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD is a separate issue and should not impact the NYPD’s patrolling activities, according to Kerik, who suggested that de Blasio address the protestors before the night kicks off.
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“The mayor should tell them basically, tonight, one is not the night to go out there and stir havoc and do some of the things they have done in the past,” Kerik said. “People have said they're peaceful protests. That has not been the case in many circumstances. Tonight would not be the night to go out there and start havoc like they have in the past and the mayor would want to get that message out to them as aggressively as possible.”
Kerik briefly touched on the controversy between the NYPD and the mayor, who many feel has sided with anti-police protestors over his own officers since protests began weeks ago following two grand juries decisions not to indict white police officers for the deaths of unarmed black men.
“He basically used his son to say that his son faced certain danger in any kind of confrontation with police with the things, the racial rhetoric, the anti-police rhetoric over the past six to eight weeks did nothing but stir an enormous amount of controversy and incited the protesters who were not so peaceful, who incited other people to attack cops,” Kerik said.
De blasio, whose wife is black, said he has warned his biracial son to be extra careful when interacting with police. Some officers turned their back on de Blasio when he spoke recently at the funeral of slain NYPD Officer Rafael Ramos, who with his partner Wenjian Liu was gunned down while eating lunch in their patrol car on Dec. 20.
The mayor and
police union officials met for two hours Tuesday to try and hammer out their differences but reports have indicated it may have been stalemate.
“The union leaders didn't look too happy, didn't make a statement … that appeared to look like nothing really was resolved," Kerik said. "Hopefully yesterday's meeting was the beginning to the end of this rift because the rift, it really helps no one. It hurts the city, it hurts the NYPD, it hurts the communities that the cops are out there protecting. They have to get this thing resolved.”
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