New York City increased the police presence at religious, cultural and diplomatic sites following the U.S. bombings in Iran, Mayor Eric Adams said after a virtual meeting on Sunday among the mayor, Police Department leaders and the agency’s international liaisons.
The mayor and the police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, held the briefing “to discuss the situation in the Middle East and how it affects us here at home,” Mr. Adams said in a statement on social media.
He said the police presence had been increased “out of an abundance of caution.”
In a separate statement on Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said state officials were “not aware of any specific or credible threat to New Yorkers.” But “given New York’s distinctive global profile,” she said, “we are taking this situation extraordinarily seriously.”
It is common practice for the Police Department — the country’s largest municipal law enforcement agency — to increase security after a major international event.
To assist in those efforts, the department confers with its liaisons who are stationed at 14 posts worldwide. Four of those posts are in Middle East: Tel Aviv; Doha, Qatar; Amman, Jordan; and Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Police officials in those countries were part of the briefing on Sunday, Commissioner Tisch said.
“We have over a dozen detectives embedded within international law enforcement agencies who serve as our eyes and ears for threat awareness overseas,” she said in a statement on social media.
“Over the past week, they have also gone above and beyond, using their contacts to help New Yorkers seeking to evacuate and get home,” she added.
In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s subway system, and the Port Authority, the agency that oversees airports, seaports, and bridges and tunnels connecting New York to New Jersey, have activated counterterrorism protections, Ms. Hochul said. State Police officers will also patrol houses of worship and other at-risk sites.
“We have some of America’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, and many have loved ones in the region,” she said. “As we work to keep New Yorkers safe, we pray for the safety of our American troops, for speedy de-escalation of this conflict, and for durable peace in the region.”
The safety of New York City in the wake of the attack on Iran also arose as an issue in the mayoral race over the weekend. Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the front-runner in the imminent Democratic primary, took the opportunity on Sunday to criticize his closest competitor, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, saying that Mr. Mamdani was not prepared to lead the city in a situation when it was on “high alert.”
Mr. Cuomo said that while he believed President Trump should have consulted Congress before authorizing the strikes, “I think the world is a safer place without Iran having nuclear weapons.”
Mr. Mamdani, for his part, condemned the attack, calling it an unconstitutional escalation that would “plunge the world deeper into chaos.”
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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