It turned out to contain a red candle, two solar-powered garden lights, a T-shirt and tin foil, said William Aubry, the chief of Manhattan detectives.
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A vehicle used during a Columbus Circle standoff, bomb robot and bear cat armored vehicle are pictured on July 21, 2016.
The New York City Police Department released video of a suspicious device being tossed onto the dashboard of an NYPD van in Times Square Wednesday night.
Around 8 a.m., the man was taken into custody and wheeled away in a stretcher.
Officers spent hours trying to negotiate with the man in the vehicle on Columbus Circle.
Dozens of officers, their guns drawn, were surrounding the vehicle, but the driver, who was also wearing some kind of body armor, refused to get out. Police have sent in a robot to get a closer look.
“You got to get out of here, we don’t know if this guy’s vehicle is going to blow up any minute”, one officer told The Post.
The bomb hoax in one of the world’s top terror targets came at a tense time for police and communities nationwide, amid anger and anxiety over police killing civilians, gunmen killing police and recent attacks by extremists in Orlando, Florida, and Europe.
Chief of Department James O’Neill says Thursday morning a cylindrical object was tossed into the open window of a New York Police Department vehicle late Wednesday night. He says the object turned out to include a harmless electrical component wrapped in cloth. He says the driver refused to get out and donned a red plastic helmet. SWAT officers went to the scene.
Surrounding streets were closed and subway trains bypassed the area, a traffic circle at the southwest corner of Central Park that is home to the Time Warner Center and the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
“We both looked at each other and we knew exactly what the other was thinking without even having to say it”, Cybulski said at a televised press conference this morning.
“The department was significantly assisted in this investigation by the camera systems, license plate detection systems, that we have throughout Manhattan”, NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
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A police officer from Long Island made news worldwide Thursday as part of a heroic duo who raced to remove what could have been a bomb from Times Square.
