Officials in New York reacted on Friday after a shooting at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises killed 12 in Colorado. The New York City Police Department will be tightening security, the city's police commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.

"As a precaution against copycats and to raise the comfort levels among movie patrons in the wake of the horrendous shooting in Colorado, the NYPD is providing coverage at theaters where The Dark Knight Rises is playing in the five boroughs," he said.

The killing, which happened at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in a suburb of Denver early on Friday, sparking pandemonium when the attacker hurled a gas canister into the auditorium and opened fire on moviegoers.