Puerto Rican Day Parade

Krikor Daglian
June 11, 2001

This year, the Puerto Rican Day parade passed without incident; unlike last year's Central Park "wilding" that marred the festivities. The police hadn't forgotten, as their presence was almost overwhelming this year on the streets of Midtown and on the East Side, where the parade marched. Most intriguing to me was the appearance of the "Motorcycle Confiscation Squad", a branch of the police I was unaware of until Sunday, but apparently is significant enough to warrant it's own special truck. These NYPD officers were hard at work this weekend, fufilling all the duties of their elite unit: trolling around the city (I saw them on 58th street yesterday), looking for illegally parked and other unlawful motorcycles (of which there were plenty - for a day the proliferation of two wheelers made me feel like I was in Italy), loading them up onto their special flatbed truck, playing with their gadgets and sitting on them. Well, maybe that last part was something I wasn't supposed to see. I think they're on to me too - my subway train was stopped for 15 minutes this morning for a "police investigation", whatever that means...