BP Eric Adams Calls For Gun Drills – A La Fire Drills – After Paris Attacks On Cultural Spaces

New Yorkers are familiar with the feeling of always being on alert, whether for terrorist attacks, muggers, or speeding vehicles, but the hours and days after last Friday’s massacres in Paris brought a renewed sense of anguish, pain, uncertainty, and resolve to residents of all five boroughs.

Here in Brooklyn, hundreds of residents gathered in Carroll Gardens outside St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church — where some services are conducted in French — the Sunday night after the attacks for a candlelight vigil in memory of the at least 129 people killed and over 300 injured.

It was at that vigil that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, himself a former NYPD officer, stated his intent to work with local businesses with large gathering spaces — such as malls, theaters, and catering halls — to create safe evacuation spaces in the event of mass shootings.

“After Paris, we have to refine what a fire drill is,” Adams told the Daily News. “In today’s world, a fire drill is not just about flames. It’s about people firing guns.”

Barclays Center and the newly renovated Kings Theatre were cited as possible venues, along with the Music Hall of Williamsburg, according to Adam’s communications director Stefan Ringel.

“We’re planning a meeting with a number of venues such as concert halls, theaters, malls, stadiums, etc. to learn about their security plans, share best practices, and discuss the possibility of emergency drills,” said Ringel, “The meeting should be taking place in the next week or two, and we will be reaching out to venues of different sizes.”

For Clinton Hill residents Violaine Huisman, whose family lives in Paris (they are safe) and who works at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — a cultural institute like the Bataclan in Paris, which saw the most casualties — regaining a feeling of safety will be difficult and take time.

“This is exactly the neighborhood they struck,” Huisman told WNYC. “People who go out for dinner, people who go to concerts, people who go out for drinks. It’s people like us. Exactly people like us.”