2024-02-16 06:52:02
BOSTON (AP) — Once the Chiefs won their second consecutive Super Bowl, fans gathered for another parade commemorating the achievement.
It is very difficult to think that there will be a third celebration in a row.
Not because the Chiefs can’t win another NFL title. After all, their star quarterback Patrick Mahomes is only 28 years old.
But if they are crowned again, it will be difficult for authorities to allow such a large gathering of fans in the same place to cheer them, security experts acknowledged after Wednesday’s shooting, which broke out just as the parade concluded.
“They have to think twice before doing these parades,” warned Bill Evans, former Boston police commissioner, who in 38 years with the department worked on 12 championship celebrations and faced the situation after the dynamite attack at the city’s marathon in 2013. “When you have so many people in the same place, nothing good can happen.”
Up to 1 million fans turned out to cheer the Chiefs on Wednesday, three days after their 25-22 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. The event included a parade down Grand Boulevard, followed by a rally in front of Union Station.
The festive music was still playing when gunshots began to be heard in the crowd. A woman of Mexican roots, who had two children, died, and 22 other people were injured — half of them under 16 years old.
Two teenagers were detained, Police Chief Stacey Graves said.
The violence in Kansas City is part of a worrying trend in which sports celebrations are turning deadly. Alcohol consumption is usually the fuel and firearms the spark that ignites these events.
In the last year alone, at least 10 people were injured by gunshots in downtown Denver, where fans were celebrating the Nuggets’ NBA crowning glory, and two people were arrested — though no one was injured — when a person fired shots at air due to a problem in a parking lot, after the Texas Rangers parade for their victory in the World Series.
Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City, asserted that the city will continue to celebrate its victories. He also kept the St. Patrick’s Day parade on hold next month.
However, Lucas acknowledged that there will be time to rethink how the championships are celebrated.
“If we are blessed enough to win a Super Bowl again, would we do this again? Or would we just say, ‘go to Arrowhead Stadium, go through the metal detectors’? “Would we hold a safer and smaller event?” asked the mayor in statements to the local television channel KMBC.
“I think many of us, particularly those thinking about bringing our children somewhere, might ask, at least for a while: ‘Is this what we want to risk?’” he added. “It is a shame that this is what we have reached today in the United States and in our city.”
Security at sporting events was a rather secondary issue before the attacks of September 11, 2001, stoked fears that terrorists could target major crowd gatherings.
The following February, the Super Bowl was listed as a “Special National Security Event,” where operations were orchestrated by the Secret Service. Fans had to pass through metal detectors to enter the New Orleans Superdome.
A similar plan was implemented for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City that same month.
But for the typical regular-season baseball game, the same police personnel were still controlling the crowds and issuing the warning to fans: “If you see something, say something.”
“They could have checked people more for alcohol,” Evans said. “But I don’t think anyone was worried about guns or explosives.”
This changed after the Boston Marathon bombing. Two pressure cookers, rigged as bombs, killed three people and injured hundreds more near the finish line of one of the world’s most prestigious foot races.
Metal detectors were installed in parks and stadiums across the country. Only small bags were allowed to enter, allowing one to see what was inside.
But those measures are difficult to meet in much larger and more open places, such as the parade headquarters in Kansas City or the 42-kilometer marathon route. The organizers of the Olympic Games in Paris, who plan to hold the opening ceremony this summer on the banks of the Seine River, have already said they will limit the number of attendees to 300,000 for safety reasons.
Ed Davis, who preceded Evans as police commissioner in Boston and was in that position during the marathon attacks, said officials don’t want security improvements that simply take the problem somewhere else.
“It is a challenge. Wherever you put a perimeter, there will always be a weak part on the outside,” she noted. “So it’s hard to cover everything.”
Davis, who is now a consultant on crisis response and security issues, said there is more planning and resources that go into events like the Chiefs parade. Kansas City officials reported there were more than 800 officers on duty Wednesday.
According to Davis, the figure would have been half that before 2013.
New technology also allows authorities to more effectively search for weapons. And the surveillance systems have facial recognition software and artificial intelligence that searches for subjects considered dangerous.
Wednesday’s shooting looks less like a terrorist attack than a dispute that got out of control.
“You always worry that the image of local crime will spill over into an event… That’s your worst fear,” Davis said. “You can’t control two groups of idiots meeting each other. And unfortunately, everyone carries weapons now.”
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