Summer Bummer: Annual Car-Free Street Event Squeezed In NYPD ‘Overkill’

Nothing says people-first streets like an army of cops in idling squad cars.

Attendees of the first of three Manhattan Summer Streets events — the first Summer Streets of Mayor Mamdani’s term — were stunned by the sheer number of police and their official or personal vehicles clogging many intersections, a change in policing strategy that NYPD, City Hall and the Department of Transportation did not discuss before or after the event.

“The choke points were just crazy,” said Clarence Eckerson Jr., the documentary filmmaker who has covered Summer Streets events for Streetfilms since their inception in 2008. “It was extremely hard for bicyclists to get around at all” because officers had deployed their cars to prevent the free-flowing cycling and jogging that Summer Streets has always promoted. “I can’t believe how overstaffed it was.”

One lieutenant manning a chokepoint at nearly entirely blocked intersection uptown told Streetsblog that the “blocker cars” were a direct order from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and were “obviously overkill.”

He said the intention was to not leave any car-sized gaps at the closed-off intersections, including on the sidewalks, which is how police ended up with four to 14 cars at some intersections. The lieutenant cited terror attacks at public gatherings worldwide featuring drivers intentionally speeding into crowds, including recently in Berlin, but the NYPD did not respond to questions from Streetsblog about whether it had received any advance warning that such an attack was being planned in New York City.

But one longtime street safety and public space advocate saw the police response as anathema to the purpose of Summer Streets.

“What makes Summer Streets so incredible is the way it invites New Yorkers to experience our streets as natural places for socializing and play,” said Carl Mahaney of Streetopia UWS (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). “People get it instinctively and respond with an easy sense of joy and community. The kind of excessive police presence we saw on Saturday and the intensive ‘hardening’ of the route runs completely counter to the spirit of possibility and liberation that Summer Streets is all about.”

Commentary on social media were legion. Alex Duncan, who moderates Reddit’s r/micromobility page where videos from multiple attendees were posted, said the police response was excessive and futile.

“Some people aren’t going to like to hear this but you can’t really entirely prevent vehicle ramming attacks for the same reasons we can’t prevent mass shootings,” he posted. “Cars can be weapons, and the ubiquity of guns and cars in our society means a single crazy person is always going to be able to do huge amounts of damage if they want to. The only way to stop that is to limit them, which nobody in power seems to want to do. We can’t just cripple every event in the city out of fear. If we do they’ve won.”

A representative of an uptown business improvement district confirmed to Streetsblog that cops said the “blocker cars” are a “newish” policy and not consistent to DOT’s boast that “Summer Streets is an annual celebration of New York City’s most valuable public space – our streets” and that it takes “our city’s usual traffic noise and honking horns will be replaced with open streets teeming with walkers, bikers, runners, and performers.”

An NYPD spokesperson who did not provide a name cited prior terror attacks around the world in a response to Streetsblog on Sunday.

“Over the past few years, we have seen a rise in terror attacks that involve the use of vehicles to ram into groups of people, causing mass casualties and destruction,” said the spokesperson, citing Berlin and three others, none in New York. “This was an operational decision intended to ensure that people could enjoy summer streets safely.”

The spokesperson did not respond to Streetsblog’s specific questions, nor did City Hall initially respond to a question of whether Mayor Mamdani ordered the new policy.

One attendee, who has enjoyed Summer Streets every year (and said she even wakes up early to experience every minute of it), was appalled by what she saw this year.

“I’ve never seen anything like the policing this year at previous Summer Streets,” she said. “Their presence was palpable. At every car crossing street, there were four to six cop cars. Most of the cars were just parked with cops sitting inside, blocking the route. I also saw cops in SWAT gear with large rifles uptown. That was jarring.

“The biggest issue was the cop cars blocking the intersections. It created an annoying and unsafe bottlenecks every few blocks,” she added. “Walkers runners and bikes would all suddenly need to slow down and merge together. I saw many people run into each other at various stops. It really didn’t make any sense. I’ve attended Summer Streets every year and there’s never been any issues.”

Here are some other photographs taken by Streetsblog staffers and others:

Other people posted complaints on the Reddit micro mobility page.

The police “really made traveling the route today significantly less pleasant,” posted Jason Froimowitz, a Manhattan resident. “Here’s hoping DOT can work with NYPD to roll this back.”

Of course, many people loved Summer Streets this year, though it is unclear if such people knew that the police strategy was a new one:

But for every supportive social media post, there were many Streetsblog readers sending us videos in opposition to the positive spin. Here’s one showing the hostile pinchpoint at 106th Street:

And Eckerson posted this video:

It’s not the first time the NYPD has responded to the concept of car-free streets with an exceptionally large police presence. When then-Mayor Bill de Blasio created the open streets program at the start of the pandemic, the NYPD deployed four officers to every single intersection of the 34th Avenue open street.

No explanation was ever provided, but subsequent coverage in Streetsblog (including a song parody) led to the NYPD realizing that it did not need uniformed officers to patrol a car-free street.

Mayor Mamdani has insisted that he controls the NYPD and will overrule its commissioner, but many observers haven’t seen the mayor put his stamp on policing or execute his police reform strategy in deference to Tisch.

In addition, the police staffing that the NYPD says is necessary to secure Summer Streets in previous years has repeated been cited as the reason that Summer Streets can’t expand beyond the current five Saturdays per year for eight hours only.

Summer Streets continues in Manhattan on Saturdays, Aug. 8 and Aug. 15.

If you want to tell DOT your opinion about Summer Streets, click the DOT survey here.