By Matthew Chayes

An NYPD drone will be up as the ball drops.

For the first time in the 111-year history of the celebratory New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square, the police will fly an unmanned aerial vehicle to monitor the crowd, which could reach 2 million revelers, the NYPD said Friday.

"It’s going to just give us an additional view of the crowd" for "an expansive view from up above, which will be helpful," said the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, John Miller.

That's in addition to about 1,225 surveillance cameras, Miller said. Thousands of NYPD cops are also assigned to police the festivities, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.

To stop a vehicle from ramming the crowds, as happened in 2017 on the West Side Highway, in 2016 in Nice, and in dozens of other terrorist attacks, the city will park more than 235 “blocker vehicles,” including sand-filled sanitation trucks, around the perimeter, Miller said.

To stop an attacker from shooting down from a skyscraper hotel, as happened in Las Vegas in 2017, the NYPD has "intelligence detectives embedded in all of the hotels well in advance of New Year's Eve" to develop relationships with hotel personnel and have access to "master keys…to get into any place they need to get in to look," Miller said.

Miller said the NYPD has also visited nearby parking lots, truck rental locations, stores and theaters.

And “to make sure that no suspicious objects get in,” every reveler must be searched by a cop with a metal detector, said the NYPD’s chief of patrol, Rodney Harrison.

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