By Missy Wilkinson
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS —A wide, weeklong security zone around Caesars Superdome and swarms of federal and state agents armed with drones in downtown New Orleans are among the public safety measures in the works in the lead-up to Super Bowl LIX, according to the lead federal agent for the effort.
The New Orleans Police Department, however, is being more circumspect about its preparations for the Feb. 9 spectacle and the hundreds of thousands of visitors it figures to draw to downtown New Orleans. The department said it would address road closures and the boundaries of the Super Bowl “campus” in the near future.
Eric DeLaune, who heads the federal effort as special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations, said hundreds of officers and agents with Louisiana State Police, the FBI, ATF, and other agencies have been training with New Orleans police for the better part of a year.
He said federal Homeland Security agents in plain clothes and uniforms will concentrate in the Warehouse District and French Quarter, some in the crowds and others on rooftops. Federal agents will pilot drones to monitor crowds, as will Louisiana State Police, he said.
Hundreds of agents on the streets will be “mostly responsive to what we see,” he said.
Super Bowl ‘campus’
The security planning effort, for an event with an economic impact projected at half a billion dollars, got a test run in October, during the three-day stop for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, officials said.
“We’re using the foundation of the strategy that we used at Taylor Swift,” NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said last week, while declining to offer specifics. “But we have a whole lot more partners and a whole lot more logistics associated.”
Unlike the Eras tour, people won’t be able to walk up to the Caesars Superdome during the big game without a ticket. The Dome will be fenced off and “swept” via canine and physical searches the night of Feb. 1, more than a week before the Super Bowl.
“From that time on, it is a clean perimeter, and everyone coming in has to be screened,” said DeLaune, who was named federal coordinator late last year. Both vehicles and pedestrians will have to go through an X-ray exam and search before being allowed inside.
The security zone will stay in place through Feb. 10, the day after the big game, he said.
Tech upgrades
DeLaune said there are committees working on various security areas, ranging from medical response to Federal Aviation Administration flight restrictions over the Super Bowl area. In addition, a few hundred federal, state and local agents met in September for a three-day workshop on human trafficking.
DeLaune said the Swift concerts offered a trial run.
“We used the crowd movements and the crowd locations and the traffic patterns to game-plan out some things,” he said.
Bryan Lagarde, executive director of Project NOLA, the nonprofit crime-camera program that has been working closely with State Police, said he deployed six mobile surveillance trailers for the Swift tour, each of them equipped with a 360-degree camera, with AI-powered features that include clothing and facial recognition and license-plate reading.
Those cameras will also roll out for the Super Bowl, with initiatives similar to those used during the 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans, with one major difference.
“The list of people we were looking for wasn’t extensive, because you can’t commit that many people to memory,” Lagarde said. “Now that it’s handled by AI, the capabilities are very large.”
Swift arrests on tap
Like the NOPD, State Police officials offered few specifics on the agency’s preparations, saying details would come soon.
Sgt. Kate Stegall, a spokesperson, pointed to plans for next week’s Sugar Bowl, which include deploying 60 troopers beyond those currently assigned to Troop Nola.
As is common in the French Quarter during Carnival, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office plans to deploy its “booking bus” to speed arrests and let officers return quickly to the streets, officials said this week.
Sheriff Susan Hutson’s office will partner with federal Homeland Security agents, NOPD detectives and anti-trafficking organizations including Skull Games and OutBound to conduct intelligence on human trafficking.
Victims will go to the New Orleans Family Justice Center to be connected with services from organizations including Covenant House, Hope Clinic, STAR and Outbound, officials said.
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