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"I'm just trying to get to the grocery store to get bananas for my kid," a woman with a stroller pleaded with the cop manning the barricade at 69th Street and Third Avenue a little after 5 p.m. Tuesday. The officer was unmoved. "You can't get through here," he told her. "It's closed for an event."
The event was a "real estate expo" hosted at the Park East Synagogue, encouraging attendees to buy land in Israel, and, the event's website suggested, in illegally annexed parts of the West Bank. The closure involved steel police barricades and dozens, if not hundreds, of officers restricting access to six blocks around the synagogue, from 66th Street to 69th Street along both Lexington and Third Avenues.
The sprawling frozen zone—which kept people protesting the event out of sight of the synagogue—and the later appearance of Strategic Response Group officers, all suggest that despite a new mayor who campaigned on police reforms and making good on a 2023 court settlement committing the NYPD to a proportional response to demonstrations, the NYPD's protest policing in 2026 remains largely unchanged.