21st Century Law Enforcement Security and Surveillance for Large Events

Last February, more than 110 million people tuned in to watch the New England Patriots claim a Super Bowl win over the Atlanta Falcons at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. Technology played an important role in the event—notably the drone technology light display that took place during the halftime show.

But technology wasn’t just used for entertainment. Local law enforcement used a plethora of new products and technologies ranging from video surveillance to audio analytics and much more. Though these products garnered little to no attention from the general public, they were integral in providing top security and surveillance during the large-scale event and helped provide the best protection to event-goers.

Threats continuously change. That is why it has been critical for agencies providing security for large-scale events to have technology that increases situational awareness, gives actionable intelligence and integrates easily with other technology.

Tech to improve situational awareness

Along with many others, Commander Scott Gerlicher with the Minneapolis Police Department (Minn.) has been working on the upcoming 2018 Super Bowl since the city received the bid in 2014. Since that time he has done a lot of research to learn what it takes to put a security plan together for an event of such magnitude. “Since 2014 we have been working on just about every aspect of security planning and we are very far along in that process,” he says. “Even though we’re still six months out, we are finalizing drafts of operational plans for the Super Bowl. It’s a major undertaking.”

One of the first challenges Gerlicher saw in his research was the difference in locations of prior Super Bowl events. Unlike the city of Houston, which is one of the largest cities in the U.S. and has around 5,200 sworn officers, Minneapolis has just over 860 police officers. The police department had to put together a public safety plan relying on the partnership of other agencies around the area. “People think Super Bowl Sunday is just one day, but it’s actually a 10-day festival that will be spread around the entire metro area, not just Minneapolis,” says Gerlicher. “From a local perspective we have a joint powers agreement that we’re entering into so that those local officers coming from the Twin Cities area and throught the state are integrated into our plan.” Not only will local and state aid be needed, but a federal partnership has been created as well.

In fact, due to the Super Bowl’s Special Event Assessment Rating (SEAR) level one, a federal coordinator was appointed to help local authorities bring in and leverage federal resources. “We have equipment, technology and people from the federal government that come in at no cost to us that are able to help us with security aspects for the Super Bowl,” says Gerlicher. This includes resources to help Minneapolis PD monitor threats on social media as well as analysts and subject matter experts to enhance the department’s current capabilities.

It also includes enhancements to the city’s existing public safety camera network. “We already have more than 300 public safety cameras throughout the city of Minneapolis but the federal government has agreed to bring in additional cameras, temporarily, that they can set up in areas where we’ll have the Super Bowl events,” says Gerlicher. “And those we will be able to integrate with our existing public safety cameras which will give us a much greater situational awareness because all the cameras that we have aren’t necessarily currently in places where we might have a Super Bowl event.”

Utilizing video to improve situational awareness is an important aspect that has been used at Super Bowls before. In 2017, the Houston PD utilized video surveillance technology at Discovery Green park during Super Bowl LIVE to not only increase situational awareness but to also increase safety for civilians. “One challenge they had were the concerts at night where audiences grew to thousands of people,” says Scott Dunn, senior director of business development at Axis Communications. “They were worried about people getting trampled and about really seeing what was going on so they deployed PTZ cameras, some even 35 stories up with Axis thermal camera technology, that allowed them to get a better picture of what was going on below.”

Minneapolis PD is also able to increase situational awareness through its work with a local company, developing technology specifically for the Super Bowl that will allow better tracking of officers in the field. “Think of it as Uber for people,” says Gerlicher, describing Field Watch, the technology produced by Minneapolis-based Securonet. “Through this technology, team leaders or specific people—wherever they’ll be working in the metro area—we’ll have a phone application where we will be able to physically see exactly where our officers are, outside of their cars.” Previously to manage events of this size, says Gerlicher, agencies would have to rely on old-school poster maps with magnets. “This new mobile application will give us a much better situational awareness for where those police officers and resources are.”

Using a common operating platform called GeoComm, which incorporates 3D interior and exterior mapping, Minneapolis PD will also be able to integrate calls for service, officer location data and other data sets in one spot. “We will be able to see the location of fixed public safety cameras and also be able to pull up livestreams of those public safety cameras,” says Gerlicher. “Rather than having to go to a separate system or multiple systems, on this common operating platform we’ll be able to basically click on that camera and see the livestream of that video.”

Officers who have Field Watch will have the ability to livestream video from their cell phones to the command post via GeoComm. “I can look at the map and see Squad 112 walking down the street and let’s say they are following a suspicious person or they’re looking at a suspicious package that may have been left behind. They can livestream what they’re looking at so we can get those images to other responders who need that information,” Gerlicher notes.

Tech to promote proactive responses

To be effective during a large-scale event, even one much smaller than the Super Bowl, technology should provide real-time information that can lead to proactive measures. “If intelligence isn’t actionable, it’s not worth a whole lot,” says John Powers, vice president of sales and marketing at L3 Mobile-Vision. “One of our agencies deployed the AlertVU Mobile License Plate Recognition (LPR) System at the beginning of a festival, which then alerted the officer to warrants, crimes and suspects at the gate and therefore by extension lowered the number of issues that occurred within the festival.”

Through federal help, the Minneapolis PD will temporarily be using license plate readers, says Gerlicher. “We’ll be able to plug into terrorist watch lists or other databases to let us know who may be coming and going from these specific high-security venues.” This type of technology can help with other challenges caused by an influx of people, such as traffic. Through the GeoComm common operating platform, the department will be able to see traffic flow and proactively respond to incidents that may occur.

Though many police departments in the U.S. may never be involved in security and surveillance for an event the size of the Super Bowl, threats for large events of any size still remain similar. For concerts, fairs and college football games, for example, many agencies deploy audio technology around the perimeter and at the gates to detect aggression or for possible gun shot detection. “It’s an additional safeguard that adds to situational awareness,” says Dunn. “Audio is another tool, as video can’t see everything.”

Fifteen years ago, most agencies wouldn’t be asking for this type of equipment for events, says Richard Brent, CEO of Louroe Electronics, but now their needs are changing. “Agencies are using technology such as audio capture as early warning activity,” he says. “At concerts, for example, there is a lot of sound and activity. Audio is analyzed on a spectrogram and if aggression is detected, an alert will go on, to which the authorities can proactively respond.”

Where tech is going

It’s hard to say where security and surveillance technology will go in the future as threats continuously change. Today many police departments are looking for technology that is easy to use and that can integrate with other tech; technology that allows you to not only gather data, but also share and respond to it.

Agencies have different levels of technology depending on department size and certainly different approaches to security and surveillance of large-scale events, says Dave Dennis, director of sales at FLIR. The important thing is that the technology communicates. “The officers on the ground should be able to have information on their devices that can be transmitted to the person in the helicopter,” he says. “As far as air, ground and tower go, everything should be tied together in real time.”

Axis Communication’s Dunn believes that security technology is moving towards the Security Internet of Things (SIoT), or the evolution of “smart devices”, such as integrated cameras into lighting with audio.

Louroe Electronics’ Brent agrees. “There’s a shift in the IoT,” he says. “As technology secures data, we have to convert data into useful information. For audio, our analytic suite of threat detection does just that.”

Back in Minneapolis, Gerlicher notes that technology is important and allows departments to leverage resources, but it in no way replaces or reduces the number of boots on the ground working a large event. For the next few months his team will be testing and making improvements to the technology they have in preparation for the big event next February. “We just held the X Games here in July where we were able to try out our technology to see how it works, rather than trying to roll out a new technology in the days leading up to the event,” he says.

So when you're watching the Super Bowl next year, amidst the fanfare and commercials, think about the security and surveillance that went into the event, the technology involved and the partnerships it takes to make it all happen.

Adapt to new threats

Law enforcement has had to adapt with the changing threat of terrorism. In some instances agencies are getting creative with preventative measures.

Each July, the Davenport Police Department (Iowa) provides security for a seven-mile road race that draws elite runners from around the world and causes an influx of people in a condensed space. “For the BIX race itself, from a police standpoint, it’s divided into two things: the actual race and traffic, which includes road closures and detours, and the emergency contingency part of it,” says Lt. Greg Behning, Davenport PD, Emergency Services Team Commander.

Like a lot of agencies after the Boston Marathon bombing (2013), Davenport PD took a hard look at their coverage of the race route. They put together an incident action plan and placed the Quad City Bomb Squad on standby.
More recently, Behning, like many other officials, has been seeing an uptick in vehicle attacks at home and abroad as the newest threat. “That became a major concern for us probably two years ago,” he says.

To completely line the route with concrete barriers to stop a vehicle attack is not possible, so his team worked with race sponsors and the public works department to lessen the threat by identifying high-speed avenues and placing large, unmovable barriers. “One of the race sponsors is a cement company, so we used their cement trucks at key intersections where we were worried about high-speed approaches.” They also partnered with the public works department to put dump trucks loaded with sand at intersecting roads and utilized several armored vehicles to act as ramming mechanisms. “A lot of our planning this year has been surrounding stopping a vehicle attack should one occur,” he says. “This is a grassroots, homegrown effort.”