Saw Horses

One July 4th my neighbor's brother hijacked the saw horses from the fireworks zone, and put them in his parking lot. The crime was actually to prevent crime so his niece and nephews could rollerblade without drug dealers.

‘End of an Era': Police Commissioner Remembers the Wooden Sawhorse
By
Al Baker
June 29, 2007 6:27 am June 29, 2007 6:27 am
sawhorse A classic wooden sawhorse used by the police in New York and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. (Photos: James Estrin/The New York Times, left, and Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times, right)Photographs See a Slide Show

Heavy-duty wooden sawhorses, a longtime icon of police crowd control at ticker-tape parades, protests and other large gatherings, are being phased out. The last 3,200 ones owned by the New York Police Department are being relegated to dull duty at street fairs and other low-impact events. Their (functional, if characterless) replacements: the interlocking gray aluminum partitions that the police call “French barriers.”

Below are excerpts from an interview with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly this week about this icon of police history.

Q: What do you think about this change?

A: It is kind of an end of an era in a way. We have used those horses as long as anybody can remember. I certainly remember as a police officer putting them together; I mean every cop certainly remembers that experience. They’ve been a valuable tool in crowd control, in closing off areas that have to be closed off. We moved to metal barriers, but that will not eliminate the wooden barriers. We have about 3,200 wooden barriers.

Q: So their numbers have dwindled?

A: Yes. They are phased out.

Q: Or shunted aside?

A: They are being neglected. [Laughs.] They are being abused — dissed, they are being dissed.

Metal barriers are easier to move. They interlock. They’re smaller though. They are actually half the size — French Barriers, as we call them, are 7 feet, whereas the wooden barriers are 14 feet. There are some smaller wooden barriers, but the vast majority are 14 feet. We’ll continue to use some of them because they are easier to see, easier for traffic control. To block off streets.

Q: Like on small street fairs.

A: Yeah. Minor duty.

But the French barriers are easier to handle and, as I say, they interlock. I think we all remember — I remember kids sitting underneath the barriers, you know. Hey, you still see that. But generally now for parades we are using the French Barriers.

Q: When the Beatles came to America and the astronauts went down the Canyon of Heroes and the Yankees — that was all —

A: All wooden, yeah, yeah, sure.

Q: Do you remember that?

A: Oh yeah, I certainly remember the Beatles. I was there. Actually the Beatles came — twice? I was at Shea Stadium, which must have been 1967. I was a recruit. I was in the Police Academy. And, I remember, obviously, the wooden barriers used there. And all major parades, you know, the Canyon of Heroes, Broadway, — it’s been all wooden barriers. And you can see them in the pictures.

Q: Why do you call the new barriers French barriers?

A: I think they came from Europe, for the most part. The ones that we have are manufactured in Louisiana. But they may have started in France. But you see them in Europe, you know, you see them now. They use them as traffic control devices. Generally speaking their streets are smaller than our streets.

Q: As a tactical matter, in a new age of terror and security concerns, the French barriers interlock, as you say. You cannot go under them?

A: Right, you can’t go under them. I mean, they’re just generally speaking more effective in denying access to a particular area. They’re easier to move. They’re lighter, they’re smaller. You can get more of them on a truck. Of course, as I say, they are only 7 feet as opposed to the standard wooden barrier, which is 14 feet. And we put them in place probably thousands of times a day. They are right here at the school, the Murry Bergtraum school here. [The Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers is adjacent to 1 Police Plaza, the department’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan.]

Q: And it makes New York feel more … European?

A: Yeah, it looks more like “The Day of the Jackal,” more European. You’re right. And that is a good point. That’s one of the things I was concerned about, when we went to Hercules Teams and you saw automatic weapons for the first time on the streets, in the city, I was concerned about the reaction and we actually got a pretty positive reaction. But as I said then, it’s a very European thing to do. You see it in the airports in Europe, you know, cops walking through with automatic weapons. You see them on the street and you see them behind those French barriers doing that, so you are right, it looks more European, or more international.

Q: So do you think we will next see the New York officers in the same fashionable police outfits as the Carabinieri, the Italian military police?

A: [Laughter.] No. We’ve set our own standard as far as uniforms are concerned. But, ah, yeah, the wooden barriers — every cop remembers moving them or even working on a detail and loading them, because they are heavy.

Q: The sawhorse is rather than a real barrier, almost like a sign that says, “Don’t come here” — less an effective, true barrier than a message.

A: Well, it has a sign on it, whereas the French Barriers do not. The wooden horses first of all have N.Y.P.D. on it, you know, written on it, and are colorful.

It’s like other things that have changed or drifted off. The call box. When I was a police officer, of course, you did, that’s how you communicated. You went to a call box. You had to make rings. Give you a ring on the hour. 40 Ring, that means that 40 minutes after the hour you made a call and you made a notation in your memo book. That’s how you communicated. Then when we got radios, you still used the call boxes because the radios were not necessarily reliable. I remember working in the 20th Precinct when the radio, on 80th Street, which is a dangerous block, the radios did not work very well. But even so it was more regularized. Let’s say you had a bit of work for somebody to do, you didn’t necessarily have to put it out over the radio. You give them a call at 40 minutes after the hour, and you give them that assignment. So, this is another indication that we move away from call boxes; now we are moving away from the wooden barriers. … We’re talking about [the fact] that we’re always probably going to always have some wooden barriers.

We’ll always have some because they do still provide a function. As I say, they are bigger. They do nicely block off a street, a play street for instance, or a street fair, where one barrier does the job. And, ah, French barriers are — I don’t want to say people take them, but they just have less of a presence. … It kind of makes a statement with that wooden barrier. But we are marching along, I guess, to reduce our number.

The wooden barriers are made by prisoners. The other ones are made by a company in Louisiana. They are more money. We pay $60 for wooden and $70 for French barriers.

Q: And the French barriers are half the size…

A: Yes, half the size. Easier to put in place though. Don’t forget, people working on those details on those barrier trucks, they’re cops; there are some civilian workers, but it is mostly cops that are doing that stuff. The metal barriers are lighter, easier to handle, easier to put in place, easier to lift off the truck. More manageable, yeah. And they’ve also saved us manpower in terms of parades, sure. As a result of metal barriers, we’ve cut down on the size of our details. It does save overtime, certainly in a parade, certainly in planned events.

Q: The sawhorse really is part of the fabric of New York City. I mean, it’s like if you turned taxi cabs pink —

A: [Laughs] Right, right. [Laughs.] It’s something that people — they probably don’t pay attention to it, but it is part of their childhood to a certain degree. If you grew up in the city, at major events, those blue barriers were always a part of them. The St. Patrick’s Day parade, the Thanksgiving Day parade, ticker-tape parades. But it is one of those things that people just take for granted. Yellow cabs. Cabs are yellow. You got to other cities, they’re not yellow.

Most people just accept it as — don’t think about it. But they have been very effective for us, the French barriers. It has been a money saver.
Crime & Public Safety, Highlights, Local History, N.Y.P.D.,