The lunch hour on Wall Street was a little more crowded than usual Monday.
Thousands thronged to the financial district to hear President Barack Obama give a noontime address on the financial crisis. The timing was deliberate: The one-year anniversary of the fall of global financial services firm Lehman Brothers.
The crowds that came to see the president meant a surge in police presence to control and restrict crowd access. Every several feet, a New York City police officer manned a section of guard rail, often joined by a secret service agent.
Barricades blocked off large swaths of the financial district surrounding the New York Stock Exchange, where the president spoke. People engulfed the intersection of Wall and Broad streets. Police department spokesmen do not provide crowd estimates.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” said one officer, standing at the steps of the Federal Hall, who declined to give his name.
Artice Jones manages Kenjo, a jewelry store on Wall Street. He said there are usually plenty of police officers in the financial district.
“There’s a strong police presence around here,” he said waving his arm to encircle the financial district. “They’ve been here since 9/11.”
But today was a little different.
“The cops told us to stay inside,” he said. “Next thing you know, the streets were full of people.”
Michael Stark works two blocks north of the New York Stock Exchange. He spent much of his lunch hour navigating the crowd.
“People were thrown in small corridors,” he said of the police method forcing crowds to stay in narrow stretches of sidewalk, barricaded off from street access.
Jennifer Flowers, armed with a sign printed in large red and black block letters the said “LAID OFF TODAY. HIRE ME,” hoped to attract attention to her plight.
“It was a sea of people and you really couldn’t move,” she said.
Link to text of President Obama’s address to Wall Street: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-Financial-Rescue-and-Reform-at-Federal-Hall/
— Ruth Schneider
Tue, Sep 15, 2009
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