KANSAS CITY, Mo. — About 200 officers patrolled the parade route on St. Patrick’s Day. Officers hit the road on foot, horseback as well as ATV’s. Police also activated the Emergency Operations Center on Saturday to help monitor the parade route.
Thousands of people lined the street to enjoy the 40th annual parade. Parade goers may not have been aware that while they were watching the parade, they had lots of eyes watching them. About 25 cameras helped watch crowds.
“Making sure the parade is safe for everyone who attends,” said Maj. Rich Lockhart with KCPD.
Experts from the FBI, Homeland Security and terrorism experts were all under one roof. They were doing more than monitoring the parade.
“They’re here because they want to be prepared for the All Star game they’re learning the capabilities of the emergency operation center and the software so when game day gets here we’ll all be ready to go,” Lockhart said.
Saturday’s event was essentially a dress rehearsal. Maj. Lockhart says a dry run is important to work any bugs out now before the All Star game hits Kansas City.
“We’re going to have several thousand people in the downtown area the Plaza area and then out at the stadium,” he said. “We have multiple venues multiple days and we also have multiple agencies so making sure we can communicate with all those agencies is very important.”
The key is that all of the agencies are communicating face to face instead of making multiple phone calls to various agencies.
“If you were to have a catastrophic event, having all the decision makers in the room being able to do that stuff face to face makes it better and allows us to respond more appropriately to those situations,” he said.
Extra security will remain in the Westport area even though the parade is over. There will also be several sobriety check points on Saturday night.
Police tell FOX 4 they answered 55 calls for service mostly ambulance calls and suspicious persons. Two arrests were made. One arrest was from a disturbance call and another arrest of an individual with a questioning advisory for homicide.
