The doorman from the victim's apartment building asks Briscoe if the NYPD shut down the "Safe and Loft unit." He is referring to the Safe, Loft and Truck Squad which was a special, elite unit of the NYPD originally founded in 1911 to investigate major commercial burglaries, art thefts, truck hijackings and kidnappings. The unit was slowly eliminated starting in 1990 and phased out over the next few years, the reason being that some of the crimes that the unit investigated, like truck hijackings, simply didn't happen nearly as often in the 80's and 90's as they did in the previous decades. Art thefts had also declined sharply and had mostly become the jurisdiction of the FBI; and kidnapping became one of the crimes investigated by the department's then newly formed Major Case Squad, in fact a number of the detectives that had worked in the Safe and Loft unit were transferred over to the Major Case Squad when it was formed.
The title of this episode comes from the title of the Tony-winning Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical "Sunday in the Park with George".
This episode appears to be based on the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks.
After this episode aired NBC met with representatives of the National Puerto Rican Coalition and other activist groups. These groups alleged the episode gave an offensive depiction of members of the Latino community. Following the meeting NBC issued an apology and promised not to repeat the episode.
Yul Vazquez plays an attorney from the DA's office in this episode. Previously, in episode 3.1, Skin Deep (1992), he played the role of Eddie Vasquez.