Times Square partygoers to ring in 2016 under watchful eye of NYPD

She will be joined by Maggie Rulli, Andrea Boehlke and Jeremy Hassell, who return for their third New Year’s Eve webcast.

NY won’t be the only place with extra cops and anti-terrorism agents keeping crowds safe: In Pasadena, California, police and feds will keep watch over a popular New Years parade route and the Rose Bowl, which drew 700,000 people last year, the Daily Mail reported. Rooftop patrols and NYPD helicopters will keep an eye on the crowd, and plainclothes officers will blend in with revelers.

Revelers have begun to fill New York City’s Times Square in the hours before the midnight ball drop, resolving to celebrate New Year’s Eve despite headlines of extremist attacks around the world and a heavy security presence.

Department officials have said they are unaware of any specific, credible threat to the Times Square gathering.

Police have nevertheless deployed bomb-sniffing dogs and radiation detectors as a precaution and have banned backpacks and liquor.

Ruskin, a former NY detective, says lessons are always learned from attacks overseas. There will be roughly 6,000 police officers on hand in this area and also will be a new counter-terrorism unit that consists of more than 500 heavily-armed and specially-trained officers. There will be countdowns at the top of every hour, leading up to the final 60-second countdown when the ball is released from atop One Times Square at 11:59 p.m.

A man is scanned with a wand by a member of the New York Police Department as he tries to enter a penned area of Times Square during New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York December 31, 2015.

Along with those million people in Times Square, an estimated 100 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide watched it all happen from home. Wow! “You can’t live your life in fear”. This year’s headliner is Carrie Underwood, but there will be performances throughout the night by Luke Bryan, Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas, One Direction, and many other popular music artists. Anthony Martins, 26, a strength and conditioning coach from Lille, France, said the long security lines were “frustrating, but we know it’s essential for us, so it’s OK”.