Dallas police are bracing for a busy weekend in Uptown Dallas and other popular entertainment districts as tens of thousands of Texas and Oklahoma fans arrive for the Red River Showdown.
The Longhorns and Sooners face off Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Cotton Bowl at Fair Park.
And the police are stepping up patrols after a handful of arrests for fighting last year. A lot of officers are being asked to walk the streets so they can be a more "visible presence" outside bars.
Jacob Poole has been coming down from Oklahoma for years for the game. Sometimes, though, he says things get rowdy during post-game bar crawls in Uptown, and it's a situation that's gotten worse in recent years.
"It's a little bit more Texas people, so they're not as nice to us Oklahoma people," he said. "Stepping up the number of police, I think that's a good idea."
Last year after the Red River game, police responded to eight incidents along a half-mile stretch McKinney Avenue in popular Uptown Dallas. There were three arrests for assaults, and police reports indicated there was fist-fighting, choking, wrestling and thrown beer bottles.
"For this weekend, especially tonight, we are going to have additional uniformed presence in and around the Uptown area," said Deputy Chief Lonzo Anderson, the new head of the Central Division, which is in charge of policing the popular nightlife neighborhoods Deep Ellum and Uptown.
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"In the last few years we've noticed a large amount of fans migrating towards the Uptown after the game," Anderson said.
Police say they've adjusted some officers' shifts and are even bringing in some patrol cops from other parts of the city to assist.
And there's a bigger push for officers to walk the streets.
"They'll be outside the car tonight. They'll be showing their presence, and doing some foot patrols up and down McKinney Avenue," Anderson said. "Walking the beat, just good traditional policing."
Fans think it's a great idea.
"I think that just the presence of seeing an officer standing around, it means people won't be as ignorant as they might otherwise be, when they might've been after they had a few drinks in their system," Poole said.
Dallas police had asked the McKinney Avenue Trolley service to end at 10 p.m. rather than its normal ending at midnight, but the trolley service posted a message on Twitter Friday afternoon saying, "Decisions have been made for our organization to continue to run our regular service until midnight tonight."
