Police Commissioner Ray Kelly admitted yesterday that the NYPD had taken its eye off the ball when officers did nothing about a suspicious van parked in Times Square for two days.
“It should have been discovered before,” Kelly said. “We’re doing an investigation into why it wasn’t discovered earlier.”
The van’s owner, George Freyer 36, turned himself in yesterday and was charged with possession of a forged instrument. Sources said a fake registration was found inside the vehicle.
The white van sat unnoticed on Broadway between 41st and 42nd streets — just a block from the NYPD’s Times Square command post — despite having no license plates and plastic sheets obscuring tinted windows.
Cops called in the bomb squad and evacuated nearby buildings just a day before hundreds of thousands of people gathered to watch the New Year’s ball drop near the scene last night.
The alert was called off when investigators found bootleg Burberry scarves inside, instead of a bomb.
The department will look at officers assigned to the area and traffic agents who failed to ticket the van, even though it was in a no-parking zone.
Additional reporting by John Doyle