New Orleans Police, Feds Turn to Taylor Swift for Super Bowl Safety Plan
By Missy Wilkinson
Source The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
Super Bowl LIX is a little over a month away, but federal agents are already in town rebooting, refining and expanding a public safety plan launched to aplomb during the sold-out Taylor Swift tour in October.
"We're using the foundation of the strategy that we used at Taylor Swift," NOPD superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said at a Dec. 17 media briefing. "But we have a whole lot more partners and a whole lot more logistics associated."
Hundreds of state, federal and local partners, including Louisiana State Police, the FBI, the ATF, and Homeland Security Investigations agents, have been training together in New Orleans for the better part of the year, according to Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge Eric DeLaune.
A St. Mary Parish native and New Orleans Saints fan, he received a "nice letter in the mail" saying the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security had chosen him to be federal coordinator for the 2025 Super Bowl.
Since then, he and his partners have been setting up special committees in areas ranging from medical response to FAA flight restrictions over the Super Bowl "campus" and doing monthly trainings, including one that coincided with Swift's Eras Tour in New Orleans.
"We used the crowd movements and the crowd locations and the traffic patterns to game-plan out some things," DeLaune said. "Obviously, a much smaller scale than the Super Bowl, but still large enough crowds downtown that it was an opportunity to test some things."
The NFL tested drop-off and pick-up points for ride-hail drivers, DeLaune said. In one departure from the Eras tour, during the big game, people won't be able to walk up to the Caesers Superdome without a ticket. The Dome will be fenced off and "swept" via canine and physical searches the night of Saturday, Feb. 1.
"From that time on, it is a clean perimeter, and everyone coming has to be screened," DeLaune said. "Vehicles will have to go through an X-ray examination and search, and people will have to go through X-ray exam and search to get inside that perimeter."
That perimeter will stay in place through Feb. 10, the day after the big game, DeLaune said.
He said that as primary agency, NOPD will take the lead providing a framework in which HSI and other agencies will provide support. Hundreds of agents specializing in human trafficking, intellectual property rights investigations, trafficking, and tactical response will come in town to "augment" their public safety efforts, DeLaune said. HSI special agents in plain clothes and in uniforms will be concentrated in the Warehouse District and French Quarter.
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