Confetti that showered down on the crowds at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade contained shredded paper made from confidential police records. Unfortunately the people who shredded the documents didn’t do a good job at destroying the information. According to the Business Insider on Monday, Nov. 26, 2012, social security numbers, detective’s phone numbers and names of undercover police officers were just some of the information revealed in the strips of paper used for confetti at the Macy’s parade.
An investigation was launched after a native New Yorker and college student found tons of long strips of paper all around him while watching the parade. The paper fell from the upper stories along the parade route. Some of the strips used for confetti contained entire sentences revealing private information. The strips even contained information on Mitt Romney’s motorcade when he came into the city in October for one of the presidential debates.
The information that appeared on the strips of paper revealed confidential business of police officers, like their bank accounts for payroll deposits, along with addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers. According to “Fox and Friends” Monday, Nov. 26, 2012, police are looking into the company in charge of shredding the documents, which were shredded horizontally instead of vertically. Vertical shredding is the safest way to do this. When the paper is shredded horizontally, an entire sentence or two can be seen, which is what happened in this case.
The confetti made from police documents was not a product used by the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade folks; they use “commercially manufactured, multicolored confetti, not shredded paper," claims a spokesperson. These shredded documents in the form of confetti could have come from the endless sea of windows in the upper stories of the buildings lining the parade route. The police are aiming to find out who it was to use this confetti.
