Seattle Police Prepare for Drone, Crowd and Vehicle Threats During FIFA World Cup

Seattle police Capt. Dan Nelson and King County Undersheriff Jeff Flohrare are among the core group of local, state and federal officials who’ve spent the last 2 ½ years imagining horrifying scenarios and planning how to respond to them during the six upcoming FIFA World Cup matches at Lumen Field.

People getting crushed in crowds. Brawls breaking out. Vehicles ramming into large groups of pedestrians. Drones carrying dangerous payloads.

“There are just a myriad of issues — if you can think of it, we probably have a contingency for how to respond to it,” Nelson said. “It really has been an exercise in emergency management, planning and ensuring we have the appropriate contingencies identified or at least the staffing to be responsive in the case of some type of tragedy.”

With an estimated 750,000 people coming to Seattle over 3 ½ weeks to cheer on their teams — on top of the usual number of tourists and cruise ship passengers that arrive in the city every summer — law enforcement agencies from all over the state and region are sending officers and equipment to help monitor for bad behavior and keep people safe.

The Spokane County sheriff’s office is sending a helicopter. Motorcycle officers from the Kennewick Police Department are coming to help with escorts from the King County International Airport, where teams, dignitaries and government VIPs will be flying in and out. The Seattle Fire Department has worked to establish the best routes for ambulances to get to Harborview Medical Center.

The State Patrol, FBI, U.S. Air Marshals, Secret Service, Coast Guard and the Washington State Guard along with fire departments, EMTs and several emergency management offices are all involved in the mission to protect and aid everyone taking part in celebrating the world’s most popular sport.

All told, there will be hundreds of officers, deputies, state troopers and federal agents working each day of the tournament.

On game days, representatives from more than 50 agencies and city departments will work under the unified command" of Seattle’s Office of Emergency Management, police, fire and transportation departments out of a joint information center at Fifth Avenue and Washington Street, said Ken Neafcy, emergency management's operations program manager. Representatives from the mayor's office, FIFA, the local organizing committee and Lumen Field will be there too, he said.

The joint information center will have direct links to a command center inside Lumen Field and the sheriff’s transit command center in Renton.

“We are looking forward to welcoming the world to Seattle,” said John Diaz, a former Seattle police chief who is chief of security for Seattle FIFIA World Cup 26, the local organizing committee. “It’s the largest sporting event in history, larger than any Olympics or (previous) World Cups,” with 48 teams — up from 32 in earlier tournaments — competing in 16 cities in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Being a host city for a global sporting event isn’t cheap. Congress appropriated $625 million for public safety in the 11 U.S. host cities and police agencies in Washington state together got about $30 million, most of it going to operational overtime, according to Nelson and Flohr. Additional money came from the state legislature.

To cover officer overtime, the Seattle Police Department received a grant of $8.5 million while the King County sheriff’s office got a grant for $5.3 million. Neither agency is pulling people off patrol to staff World Cup events so there will still be officers and deputies available to respond to 911 calls.

“Obviously, there’s super-high personnel costs with putting something like this on,” Nelson said.

A transit-only event

While Lumen Field usually has capacity for roughly 69,000 people, thousands of seats are being removed to accommodate the international media. So, any sold-out games will likely mean there’s room for 62,000 to 63,000 fans inside, with hundreds more expected at fan celebration sites at Seattle Center, Pacific Place Mall, Westlake Park, Pier 62 and Pier 58 on the waterfront, and Victory Hall, across from T-Mobile Park.

There won’t be any public parking available at the garages at Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park and private parking lots in the stadium district “are going to be charging an arm and a leg,” Flohr said. That means most people going to and from matches or those headed to watch parties in Pioneer Square will likely arrive by light rail or bus.

The King County sheriff’s office is responsible for policing both Sound Transit and Metro Transit and there are 50 to 60 officers on duty across the transit system on a typical day, he said. On World Cup game days, their ranks will swell by 100-plus officers.

“We know (police) presence deters crime and we want to be able to have that presence,” Flohr said. “Our plan is to have uniforms at every station, increasing in numbers and depth as you get closer to your main event. … Hopefully, their day is spent giving directions.”

Officials have dubbed the area around main transit hubs — Pioneer Square, SODO, and Stadium stations — as “the last mile,” and are working to create an environment “where a large number of people on foot can walk and collect and stand in lines” at shops, restaurants and bars hosting World Cup gatherings, Nelson said.

Seattle police officers assigned to World Cup events will wear bright yellow uniform shirts to make them stand out in crowds and plainclothes officers will mingle with pedestrians, according to Nelson. Police outreach and engagement teams, along with EMTs and bike cops, will accompany fan marches, there will be a visible police presence at all the fan celebration sites and newly installed cameras in the stadium district will be activated by the Real Time Crime Center if police learn of credible threats or officers are responding to in-progress incidents, he said.

“There’s a lot of pyrotechnics and smoke canisters and things like that that accompany fan march behavior, so we want to make sure we’re prepared to be responsive to any emerging issues that come as a result of the fan behavior,” Nelson said.

He added that there will be "a really pronounced footprint in the Pioneer Square area, where police are concerned about the potential of drivers — accidentally, intentionally or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol — crashing into crowds.

Such attacks “unfortunately have only increased in severity and rate of occurrence globally,” he said. “Large sporting events and large crowds are a very legitimate target for bad actors.”

Threats from above

Global events — specifically, the weaponization of drones in the war in Ukraine and now, the Middle East — have also influenced how U.S. cities prepare to host World Cup matches. In December, the Safer Skies Act went into effect, overhauling drone policy and enabling the FBI to cross-deputize local law enforcement officers to detect, track and, when lawfully authorized, interfere with illegally operated drones.

“Overseas, we’ve seen how drones can be very effective at delivering payloads and that’s kind of the worst-case scenario. That’s what we’re all afraid of,” said Sgt. Eric Kim, the counter-Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) coordinator for the King County sheriff’s office.

Over the past three years, the sheriff’s office has trained 50 or so deputies as drone operators. They can launch drones from patrol vehicles for outdoor searches while smaller models are used by specialized units like the SWAT team to search interior spaces — most frequently during calls involving armed and barricaded subjects.

But for the first time, cross-deputized officers like Kim can take counter measures against drones.

The sheriff’s office, which already works in the aviation space with the only full-time rotary air support unit in Western Washington, flying both patrol and search-and-rescue helicopters, was the logical agency to work with the FBI on counter-UAS operations, said Flohr, the undersheriff.

“Jamming or taking control (of drones) is strictly federal purview,” he said.

But with the World Cup, federal officials knew they didn’t have the personnel or equipment to adequately meet the potential threat posed by unlawful drone operators, according to Flohr and Kim.

With passage of the Safe Skies Act, $500 million in federal funding was made available to U.S. host cities, with the sheriff’s office receiving $11.7 million. The lion’s share of that went to buying three counter drone trailers, each with a price tag of $3 million.

“They are rolling electronics suites,” said Flohr, explaining that the trailers won’t be used for surveillance but to find drones violating the temporary flight restrictions that will be in place in the airspace above Lumen Field starting three hours before and ending three hours after each match. Drones operated by FIFA and authorized media outlets will show up as “white-listed” in the sheriff’s dispatch system, he said.

Flohr said the invisible bubble over the stadium will be larger than flight restrictions in place during Mariners and Seahawks games. The trailers can share images with each other, Guardian One, and the various command centers, allowing commanders to direct teams to contact drone operators, whether they’ve launched from somewhere on land or say, a boat in Elliott Bay, he said.

“Basically, it’s equipment looking for equipment,” Flohr said. “It tells us where the person illegally flying is, tells us how to get to them and then if we have to, if we realize it’s got a payload or looks dangerous, allows us to use electronics to intercept or interfere with that drone.”

Kim said there are two kinds of illegal drone operators: the “careless and clueless,” who probably should’ve checked an app and got permission to fly from the FAA, and people with nefarious intent.

“Imagine if you had a drone that released flour over a crowd … and it starts misting everywhere,” he said. “That alone is going to cause so much panic … People are going to run out of the stadium, possibly get trampled on and die.”

While the “careless and clueless” will be educated about their wrongdoing, those intentionally creating safety hazards will be subject to either criminal or civil investigations, with possible fines up to $100,000, Kim said.

“There’s always been messaging that drones can be dangerous but we’re finally getting that traction to be able to, across the board, do this unprecedented, interagency response to counter drones,” he said. “It’s pretty awesome.”

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