Dallas Reveals Super Bowl Safety Plans

Traffic congestion is the biggest public safety issue, according to police planning security for North Texas' first Super Bowl.

As of Tuesday morning, 299 Super Bowl week events were scheduled in Dallas alone.

Deputy Chief Tom Lawrence revealed part of the security plan Tuesday at a Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee meeting.

He said the busiest time will be Thursday through Saturday before the Feb. 6 game in Arlington.

"Almost every corporate entity that's coming here that wants to have a party," Lawrence said. "Every star that's coming here seems to want that three-day block of time to have those events."

The events range in size from small parties with 200 or so people to the big NFL Experience attraction that will be staged at the Dallas Convention Center.

"Our biggest concern is that we leave the streets open so we can move traffic if we were to have an emergency and we had to move traffic," Lawrence said.

Lawrence said 250,000 people are expected to attend the NFL Experience between Jan. 27 and Feb. 7.

The Convention Center will have one of five Super Bowl week public safety command centers staffed by Dallas police.

"We have a solid plan in place," Lawrence said. "We've identified all the personnel we need to man all the different venues that we have. We have the response teams that we need to handle anything either spontaneous or incidents that may come up."

The Dallas Sheraton Hotel will have the NFL Media center, where as many as 5,000 press representatives are expected receive credentials during Super Bowl week.

Lawrence said celebrities coming and going for interviews at The Sheraton could attract crowd issues on the street.

And Dallas Fair Park will host 13 Super Bowl-related events.

"It looks like Downtown and Uptown are probably getting somewhat saturated with events, so Fair Park came up as a natural," Lawrence said.

Dallas police have worked with state and federal authorities to develop the Super Bowl public safety plan for the entire region.

A state fund will pay local government expenses.

"We already are tracking all the time, and it will be reimbursed," Dallas Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans said.

Officials are not revealing the entire security plan for obvious reasons but say it is important for local residents to know some of what's coming so things go smoothly.

Councilman Dwaine Caraway, who chairs the City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman, said pleasing the NFL is a very important goal.

"They're going to be so sold on Dallas, Texas, that they're going to come back time and time again," he said.

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