SANTA CLARA — When the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots kick off Tremendous Bowl LX on Sunday, tens of hundreds of spectators at Levi’s Stadium, and a whole lot of thousands and thousands extra around the globe, can be watching intently.
So will a community of a whole lot of seen, and less-visible, regulation enforcement officers and safety personnel fanning the 1.85-million-square-foot venue and its environment to look at for potential threats. They are going to be backed by a phalanx of surveillance cameras, drones and a number of real-time technological hubs monitoring each entrance, doorway and egress level.
Santa Clara police, who’ve been drawing up safety for 49ers video games and different main occasions because the venue opened in 2014 — and who helped host Tremendous Bowl 50, the stadium’s first NFL championship, in 2016 — have been guarded about releasing even broad safety particulars. However on Tuesday, Chief Cory Morgan touted his division’s earlier expertise internet hosting the massive recreation.
“When that recreation was awarded, Santa Clara had not but hosted a serious occasion at Levi’s Stadium. Twelve years later, we’ve hosted greater than 200 main occasions, together with Tremendous Bowl 50. That have issues. It’s given us a transparent understanding of what it takes to securely host an occasion of this scale and significance,” Morgan mentioned at an NFL-organized public security briefing in San Francisco.
“We’ve got a complete public security plan in place that addresses a variety of contingencies … I’m assured within the planning that’s been finished and within the professionals that can be executing that plan,” Morgan continued. “I’m excited for Sunday. It’s going to be a gorgeous day in Santa Clara and we’re prepared.”
In keeping with officers, many of the metropolis’s $6.3 million tab for internet hosting the Tremendous Bowl will go towards police and safety, which might roughly match the safety prices for an entire season of 49ers house video games.
The police blotter for the Tremendous Bowl a decade in the past was comparatively uneventful: About 20 arrests for drunkenness and minor disorderly conduct had been recorded, and one bomb menace — deemed not credible — was created from a pc in Europe. 4 small planes had been diverted by the Air Power after breaching restricted airspace across the stadium, however the plane had been by no means thought-about threats. A North Korean satellite tv for pc that hovered some 300 miles above the final stadium space was additionally deemed non-offensive.
Since Monday, there was one aerial presence that has caught eyes and ears: A low-flying Leonardo AW-139 helicopter scanning the realm with radiation sensors, which the Nationwide Nuclear Safety Administration mentioned is “a part of normal preparations to guard public well being and security through the” Tremendous Bowl. The aim of such a survey is just not in response to any menace, however fairly to ascertain a baseline radiation stage.
“These aerial radiation surveys are a standard and routine a part of safety and emergency preparedness actions,” reads an NNSA assertion, which provides that the flights had been set to finish Wednesday.
Jim Dudley, a retired San Francisco police deputy chief who oversaw quite a few massive occasions and festivals in that metropolis, mentioned the aim for Tremendous Bowl LX must be what 2016 achieved: an earthly after-action report.
“Actually, if everyone may go house at 3 or 4 within the morning and never be injured, and never have to jot down stories about stuff that occurred all evening, that’s the measure of success,” mentioned Dudley, now a criminal-justice lecturer at San Francisco State College. “Then subsequent week there can be a debrief and we’ll see what labored and what didn’t work, and pack it up and put it aside for the subsequent one.”
However the already-complex Tremendous Bowl image is additional clouded by tensions and palpable fears about Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers descending on the realm, stoking concern with immigrant communities who’ve seen extra aggressive and visual ICE exercise at South Bay courthouses and jails.
At a downtown San Jose rally Monday, civil-rights teams together with the San Jose-Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sounded the alarm over a possible surge in ICE enforcement timed with the festivities.
“We’re right here earlier than the Tremendous Bowl arrives, earlier than the cameras, the spectacle, the company slop and gloss, as a result of we all know what these moments are used for: expanded raids, militarized presence, intimidation disguised as public security and in the end, violence,” mentioned Musa Tariq, coverage director for CAIR’s Bay Space chapter, including: “ICE, get out of the Bay!”
NFL and regulation enforcement officers had been pressed on the problem on the Tuesday information convention; Cathy Lanier, the league’s chief safety officer, mentioned whereas companies below the Division of Homeland Safety are a part of the general Tremendous Bowl safety infrastructure – per previous follow – ICE brokers should not.
“There are not any identified, no deliberate ICE or immigration enforcement operations which can be scheduled across the Tremendous Bowl or any of the Tremendous Bowl associated occasions,” Lanier mentioned. “We’re assured of that.”
Nonetheless, Lanier declined to reply immediately when pressed on whether or not the league or regulation enforcement would even get notification about inbound ICE exercise at any recreation occasions; she additionally emphasised her confidence within the league’s relationship with DHS. Equally, in a security-themed video launched final week by Santa Clara police, Chief Morgan mentioned his division “doesn’t direct or management federal regulation enforcement companies and doesn’t essentially obtain superior discover of their operations.”
He added within the video, “As a matter of follow, we don’t affirm, deny, or speculate concerning the presence or actions of different companies.”
That assertion drew condemnation from native NAACP President Sean Allen, who in a public e mail to Morgan wrote that the stance “created affordable concern that SCPD intends to facilitate – via motion or deliberate inaction – federal immigration enforcement operations through the Tremendous Bowl.”
Dudley, the retired police chief, mentioned the the possibilities of a large immigration enforcement motion timed with the Tremendous Bowl are low, given the potential political and sensible harm such a spectacle may convey.
“I don’t suppose we’re going to see any type of dust-up like that,” he mentioned. “The extent of rhetoric is simply ridiculous proper now … It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose if something like that occurs.”
He additionally famous that Homeland Safety, shaped as an govt division in 2002, has lengthy had a job in big-event safety, together with crackdowns on human trafficking. Although ICE’s enforcement actions are going through heavy criticism, the company nonetheless is just one a part of the DHS net, which incorporates U.S. Customs, the Transportation Safety Company, the Federal Emergency Administration Company and others.
“If it’s been applicable earlier than, it must be applicable now,” he mentioned.
The DHS federal coordinator for Tremendous Bowl LX, Jeff Brannigan— additionally the appearing special-agent-in-charge for Homeland Safety Investigations in Northern California — affirmed that his company, which operates below the DHS, is constant its previous follow of offering companies to the occasion, deploying the Coast Guard to look at the Bay’s shores and looking for potential threats from on-line assaults and weapons of mass destruction.
Brannigan added that “we’ve a number of intelligence teams which can be working and monitoring completely different sources of intelligence and we’ve had no credible or particular threats by any means.”
“Nothing on our radar,” he mentioned on the NFL information convention. “We’re feeling actually good going into this era.”
Sanjay Virmani, special-agent-in-charge of the FBI San Francisco area workplace, mentioned his company’s safety function consists of coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration to implement momentary flight restrictions and drone bans within the airspace round Levi’s Stadium, and offering SWAT and bomb squad personnel.
However chief amongst brokers’ duties, Virmani mentioned, is working a joint command heart overseeing the Tremendous Bowl and accompanying occasions, with intelligence analysts “working across the clock to gather and assess menace info and to share intelligence in actual time and to coordinate fast responses if wanted.”
“We’re prepared,” Virmani mentioned.
