Trucks packed with sand will blockade New York’s Times Square to thwart New Year’s Eve terrorists

Officials fear a truck-driving terror attack such as those in France in Germany

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A protective barrier of sand-filled Sanitation Department trucks is parked in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan on November 10, as a counter-terror measure. The same tactic will protect revellers in Tines Square on New Year’s Eve. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:36am, 30 Dec 2016Updated: 9:55am, 30 Dec 2016

Massive 20-tonne sanitation trucks, weighted with an extra 15 tonnes of sand, will surround the iconic New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, officials said Thursday, describing a security measure meant to stop deadly truck-driving attacks into crowds like those in Germany and France.

The placement of the 65 trucks, along with 100 patrol cars, at intersections surrounding Times Square is a new element to an already heavily policed event that will include 7,000 officers, specially armed counterterrorism units and bomb-sniffing dogs.

“We live in a changing world now,” New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neil said at a press conference. “It can’t just be, ‘What happens in New York, what happens in the United States?’ It has to be more, ‘What happens worldwide?’”

A pedestrian asks directions from two heavily armed counterterrorism officers stationed in Times Square on Thursday. Photo: AP

A Tunisian man who ploughed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin this month killed 12 people and injured 56 others. His attack followed a more deadly assault in Nice, France, in July that left 86 people dead when a man drove a 20-tonne refrigerated truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day.

New York police studied those events in planning their Times Square security.

“As we formulated this year’s plan, we paid close attention to world events and we learned from those events,” said Carlos Gomez, the NYPD’s chief of department.

More than 1 million people are expected to attend the annual ball drop countdown in Manhattan, and officials said they didn’t know of any terror threats.