New York city prepares for ‘Super Bowl of security’

New York police and a host of federal agencies are preparing for the annual traffic and security nightmare known as the United Nations General Assembly, featuring a week of speeches by US President Donald Trump and a parade of other dignitaries.

The meeting, scheduled to begin on Tuesday, will bring street closures, thousands of police officers and hundreds of protesters to midtown Manhattan, an area already plagued with gridlock on an average weekday.

“It’s the equivalent of the Super Bowl of security,” said J. Peter Donald, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department.

Trump will be on hand on Monday and Tuesday, when he will address the body of world leaders for the first time. It was not immediately clear whether he would stay at his Manhattan penthouse about a mile away from United Nations headquarters or sleep at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The event also comes just days after a homemade bomb on a packed commuter train in London injured 22 people, though it failed to fully explode.

A handful of anti-Trump protests in New York have been scheduled. A march on Monday to combat “white supremacy” will start from Grand Central Terminal, while the left-wing activist group Code Pink has organized a Tuesday march to the UN to protest Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other protesters will gather outside the UN to call out specific countries.

Police did not immediately offer an estimate on how much the week’s security and traffic measures would cost.