Looking Back on the '93 Cowboys Parade Debacle

Considering the sheer size of the crowd gathered throughout Downtown Dallas, we’ll go ahead and call the Mavericks championship parade an overwhelming success. 200,000 people lined up to get a glimpse of the conquering Mavs--of those, only three arrests were made, a skirmish the biggest issue of the day.

The success of the event may have been influenced by the drastic failure that was the Dallas Cowboys parade in 1993, a debacle that showed city officials how not to hold a massive celebration.

That parade, held to welcome the Super Bowl Champion Cowboys back to Dallas, far more resembled Wednesday evening’s riots in Vancouver than Thursday morning’s jovial procession through downtown. Dozens of Cowboys fans were injured and 14 were arrested.

Flash back to 2011, and it’s clear that city officials learned from that day almost 20 years ago. Dallas Police Chief David Brown drew up the security plan for Thursday personally, a plan that included uniformed and plain clothes officers, surveillance units and nearly 22,000 feet of barricades to keep fans a safe distance from floats.

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