Hamas is calling on their supporters to hold worldwide protests on Friday, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul said there are “no credible or specific threats” against the city ahead of those demonstrations.
During a press conference Thursday evening, Adams and Hochul stressed that safety of New Yorkers is of the utmost concern.
Gov. Hochul said there will be active vigilance across not only the city, but also the state of New York.
“There is currently no intelligence showing any active threats in New York – that is the entire state of New York,” said NY Gov. Hochul. “But in the moment fraught like this, we will continue to exercise elevated vigilance and impose measures to deteriorate any potential violence.”
She said state police have been “fully activated” and the National Guard has been directed to patrol key transportation hubs.
Demonstrations throughout the week have been loud-at times, angry-but with no overt acts of violence. But the potential for an attack by local Hamas sympathizers is something NYPD commanders cannot afford to ignore.
“We’re trying to make sure that violence doesn’t manifest on the streets of New York City,” said Dep. Cmsr. Rebecca Weiner with the NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.
Weiner says officers are monitoring online postings by radical groups-some of whom are calling for a “Day of Rage” Friday in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
“We are deeply disturbed by the message of hate. It is not acceptable,” Adams said during Thursday’s briefing.
Large deployments of uniformed officers are already hitting the streets-with more to take up positions Friday.
“There’s the part that you see, which involves a lot of officers, some of our counterterrorism officers, our Critical Response Command folks who are high visibility patrols, heavy weapons armed and trained responding to locations throughout the city, schools, houses of worship, sensitive locations,” Weiner said. “And then there’s the intelligence side, which is the part that you don’t see-the online monitoring for threats and making sure that we can anticipate whether there’s any reflection back to the city based on the overseas events.”
Gov. Hochul called it a “personal choice” to pull children from religious schools or to skip synagogue Friday night in response to the call of pro-Palestinian protests.