NYPD not going soft on giant pillow fights

NEW YORK - A pillow fight might seem like harmless fun, but the New York Police Department (NYPD) is on alert and even conducted surveillance during a giant pillow fight in Union Square.

Cops on alert for unrest were at the April 3 event, touted as hipster performance art attended by hundreds of people.

“The NYPD assigns both uniformed officers and plainclothes officers, from Intel [Intelligence Division] or otherwise, to make certain disruption associated with these and similar events in the past don’t get out of hand,” The New York Daily News quoted NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, as saying.

However, police sources involved in the surveillance complained that an alert was a waste of time.

“The pillow fight is just about a bunch of high school kids goofing off,” one source said.

Meanwhile, Kevin Bracken, an organizer who has irked cops by producing dozens of daffy public events without getting permits, said the attention paid to the pillow fight was over the top.

While ordinary pillow fights have existed for a long time, these events are promoted primarily via the Internet.

Many massive pillow fights have been organized in an effort to break Guinness World Records, but the current record is a pillow fight between 10,000 at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta on October 6, 2006. Others have been organized by university students around the world for fun. (ANI)