Massive sand-filled garbage trucks will line Times Square during New Year's Eve celebrations

Massive dump trucks filled with sand will line the streets surrounding New Year's Eve celebrations in New York City this weekend. The 20-ton vehicles will hold an additional 15 tons of sand, the Associated Press reported Thursday night.

The trucks provide a dense, protective barrier in the event of a bomb. It is part of comprehensive anti-terrorism strategies law-enforcement officials deploy to ensure public safety.

The Times Square New Year's Eve event is already a heavily policed affair, but this year, the stakes are even higher, after a series of terror attacks that erupted in Europe - some of which involved the use of heavy vehicles.

A Tunisian man who drove a heavy truck into a Christmas market in Berlin this month killed 12 people and injured 56 others. His attack followed a more deadly assault in Nice, France, in July that left 86 people dead when a man drove a 20-ton refrigerated truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day.

Officials cited by the Associated Press said they were unaware of any specific threats against Times Square.

Here's some of what you might see there on New Year's Eve:

• 65 sand-filled dump trucks
• 100-plus patrol cars
• 7,000 officers
• Specially armed counterterrorism units and bomb-sniffing dogs

The truck tactic has been used before.

Garbage-haulers were parked around Trump Tower and Hillary Clinton's election headquarters on Election Day in November.

Similar preparations are being made for New Year's Eve festivities in Las Vegas.

NYPD chief Carlos Gomez told the AP, "As we formulated this year's plan, we paid close attention to world events and we learned from those events." Department commissioner, James O'Neil, echoed the sentiment, saying "It can't just be, 'What happens in New York, what happens in the United States?' It has to be more, 'What happens worldwide?'"