More NYPD officers will police this year's 9/11 ceremony than before, commissioner says

More NYPD officers will protect this year's 9/11 anniversary ceremony than in the past, the police commissioner said on Wednesday, continuing what has become a practice of announcing that a major public event would be policed by a deployment of unprecedented size.

Beginning hours before Friday's ceremony in lower Manhattan, which will mark 25 years since terrorist-hijacked jetliners were flown into the World Trade Center, all but official automobile traffic will be banned south of Canal Street, said the commissioner, Jessica Tisch. Secret Service-installed fencing will block public access approaching the site, while uniformed and plainclothes officers will be out in force, she said at a news conference with Mayor Zohran Mamdani at police headquarters.

"As you've heard me say in preparation for so many events this year, we have amped up, or increased, our deployments for large events this year, particularly since the start of hostilities in Iran," Tisch said. "And so yes, our deployment this year at the World Trade Center for 9/11 will be larger than it has been in previous years, as will be our deployment this year for the High Holy Days at shuls and yeshivas and Jewish cultural institutions, just based on the realities of the world that we live in today."

Rosh Hashanah begins on Friday night.

Mamdani said there are no "known, specific or credible" threats against the city. The numbers of officers to be deployed for the 9/11 anniversary commemoration this year or for the High Holy Days were not disclosed.

Dignitaries including Vice President JD Vance will gather at Ground Zero on Friday morning for the official World Trade Center memorial ceremony, at which the names of the nearly 3,000 victims killed at the Twin Towers, Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, will be read aloud and bells tolled in memoriam. For the first time, there will be a bell tolled for the many more who have died of 9/11-related ailments. The ceremony is closed to the general public.

In June, over 10,000 of the department's total of 36,000 uniformed officers were assigned to police the Knicks victory parade in lower Manhattan, in what Tisch said was the largest police deployment ever for a planned event. That deployment was bigger than the entirety of any other municipal police force in the United States except Chicago's, which totals 11,000. For the Israel Day parade weeks earlier, Tisch announced "the largest number of officers ever assigned to that detail."

Similar announcements about record-setting headcounts were made for other events by past administrations, including for Pope Francis' visit in 2015.

Wednesday's news conference, on the second floor of police headquarters at 1 Police Plaza, came after Tisch and Mamdani spoke downstairs in the lobby, where 492 current and former NYPD officers who died on 9/11 or in its aftermath were memorialized.

"Amazing Grace" echoed on loudspeakers as purple and black bunting was pulled up on two walls bearing a plaque for each name. On one wall, there are the names of the 23 officers killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. On an adjacent wall are the names of the 469 officers, some retired, who succumbed to 9/11-related illnesses caused by toxic air and debris unleashed by the buildings' collapse.

The names of the 23 killed the day of the attacks have been on plaques in the lobby for years. The 469 are new.

"Though their sacrifices came at different times, today, we remember them together," said Capt. Jack Conway of the NYPD's ceremonial unit, the event's emcee.