Security measures ahead of New Year's celebrations

It's the eve of New Year's Eve and folks are getting ready to ring in the New Year.

Thousands are expected to gather on the Delaware River Saturday night and watch the fireworks.

Sunday morning the action and security issues will shift to outside City Hall and South along Broad. With the Mummers Parade, more shoulder-to-shoulder crowds expected.

A weekend of mass celebration, including crowds of people, who by definition are soft targets.

In Europe, twice in the last six months, terrorists using not bombs, but just large commercial trucks were able to kill and maim.

In reaction to that, New York announced it will beef up security around Times Square Saturday night.

In addition to 7,000 officers available and bag checks, more than 100 heavy trucks, some loaded with sand, will be used as shields to physically block a Nice- or Berlin-style truck attack.

Not going into details about measures that will be used here this weekend, Lt. John Stanford says the city has used trucks in the past to provide protection.

"We've used a number of those tactics throughout the past at a number of different events that we've had here. Just more recently the DNC, as well as our celebration that we have during July 4th, so we'll have the same type of tactics in place," said Lt. Stanford.

Action News spoke with a Delaware County family in town Friday. Some planning to come back Saturday night for the fireworks.

Asked if they had considered the risks of something going wrong in a large public setting, they told us, yes, it's constant.

"I think we all feel the same way. We've thought about it when we went to New York a few weeks ago," said Lee Madden of Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania. "You always think about it."