Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Romney Secrets Wind Up as Turkey Day Confetti

Police are investigating how shredded documents revealing confidential information, including details about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s motorcade, wound up as confetti on a Manhattan sidewalk during the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Bits of shredded paper from the Nassau County Police Department could still be found on Monday afternoon in the cracks of the sidewalks along Central Park, according to Saul Finkelstein, the eyewitness who first alerted authorities to the problem.

Thousands of pieces of shredded paper were scattered along the parade route at 65th Street and Central Park West shortly after the parade began on Thursday morning, Finkelstein and his son, Ethan Finkelstein, 18, told Reuters.

Upon closer inspection, the confetti contained information from Nassau County police incident reports plus the names, social security numbers and bank account information of Nassau County police officers and employees.

Other scraps included information about Mitt Romney’s motorcade to and from the Oct. 16 presidential debate at Hofstra University in Nassau County, which borders New York City to the east on Long Island.

“It was everywhere,” Saul Finkelstein said, estimating the scraps piled three inches (7.5 cm) off the ground. The Finkelsteins scooped up and took home several handfuls, a small percentage of what was on the ground, Ethan Finkelstein said.

The Nassau County Police Department on Monday reiterated its statement from Saturday that it was very concerned and would investigate how the documents got to Manhattan and review how it disposes of sensitive documents.

Authorities could not say how shredded paper from a Long Island police force ended up along the parade route. The confetti Macy’s uses in the parade is multicolored and commercially manufactured confetti, not shredded bits of printer paper, a Macy’s spokesman said in an email.

Parade spectators often bring homemade confetti to the parade. Both spectators in the crowd and participants in the parade were throwing the shredded Nassau County documents at each other, Saul Finkelstein said.

Two internal affairs officers from the Nassau County Police Department visited Finkelstein’s home on Sunday to recover the shredded documents and take a statement, Saul Finkelstein said.

Revealing shreds of Nassau County police documents were still on the ground on Monday, Saul Finkelstein said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.