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Tisha Thompson, ESPN
The NFL and federal law enforcement are increasing security for Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans in response to the New Year’s Day terrorist attack on Bourbon Street that killed 14 people, officials told ESPN.
Officials acknowledged that the New Orleans attack, in which a man drove a truck through crowds, prompted authorities to add extra manpower and resources to one of the most highly protected sporting events in the nation.
“We’ve increased our security posture significantly so that people can come here, they can see a strong law enforcement presence,” said Eric DeLaune, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New Orleans who is leading federal coordination for Super Bowl LIX.
“I’d like to say it doesn’t change a lot in our security planning, but it does change things,” the NFL’s Chief Security Officer Cathy Lanier told ESPN. “Are we doing anything differently? Of course.”
More than 125,000 people are expected to travel to New Orleans for the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, just five weeks after the attack which led to the postponement of the Sugar Bowl.
DeLaune, who, like Lanier, is in New Orleans this week prepping for the event, said the increased security presence will soon be obvious. There will be SWAT team members, armored vehicles, special agents on rooftops, government surveillance drones and extra security cameras around the city, according to DeLaune. The U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will patrol the Mississippi River and the Transportation Safety Administration will deploy more than 90 bomb-sniffing dogs.
“My goal was that you couldn’t walk a city block in downtown New Orleans without at least encountering one law enforcement official,” DeLaune said. “I’m not trying to make people afraid. I want people to see that we’re prepared.”
Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense and CIA director in the Obama administration, said the New Orleans attack, which federal officials have said was carried out by a U.S. military veteran inspired by ISIS, was a “wakeup call” that “terrorism remains a real threat to our country.”
DeLaune said that in response to that lone wolf attack, which he agreed is a difficult threat to account for, law enforcement has added intelligence analysts to watch for potential threats.
Unlike the Sugar Bowl and other sporting events, the Super Bowl is a federal Tier One event, receiving support from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and others tasked with fighting terrorist threats.
DeLaune declined to give specifics on how many extra people will be on the ground the week of the Super Bowl, but said “hundreds” of federal officers will be moving throughout the city to support local and state law enforcement from now until after game day.
“You’ll see plenty of uniformed people but there are going to be lots of plainclothes people in the crowds too,” DeLaune said. “We want people to know that.”
After the attack, local police officials said the city had been replacing street bollards ahead of the Super Bowl. The New Orleans City Council has since launched an investigation into the city’s street barrier system, which failed to prevent the attacker from driving his truck into the crowded street. Lanier told ESPN the NFL did not specifically ask New Orleans to fix the bollards but noted replacing equipment “is all part of what a host city normally does.”
“It’s my understanding that those bollards have not been in working order for some time and had been planned for replacement,” she said.
DeLaune said state and local law enforcement have since increased barricade protection on Bourbon Street and throughout the French Quarter in response to the attack.
“Barriers may not have been working. There may have been some other issues that played into the impact of this event on Jan. 1,” he said. “But I can tell you the response is genuine. The response is because they want the city to be safer, they want Bourbon Street to be safer, and they don’t want to see an attack like this happen again.
“I can see where somebody might have said there could have been more done, but I can tell you now that the stuff being done is not because of a Super Bowl. It’s not because of Mardi Gras,” he said. “It’s because they genuinely are concerned about the safety and security of the citizens they serve, and they’re trying to make things better.”
The NFL started its security planning for the Super Bowl 18 months ago and began building out the security perimeter five days after the attack, according to Lanier. She flew to New Orleans within hours of the attack to receive briefings and returned this week to meet with law enforcement and to walk the perimeter of each venue, including the security barricades around Caesars Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the site of the NFL’s four-day fan experience.
A former police chief for Washington, D.C., Lanier compared Super Bowl planning to preparations for the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20. “It’s the difference between Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, D.C. and the inauguration. It’s a completely different planning effort and different level of commitment of resources.”
The Super Bowl host stadium typically has a security perimeter three times the size of a regular-season game, limiting access to a small number of checkpoints, according to Lanier.
“In many ways, the Super Bowl itself will have so much protection that it may be the safest place in the world,” said Chuck Wexler, a leading security expert and executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
The challenge, according to Wexler and other security experts, is securing all the other places fans may visit in the eight days leading up to the game. At last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, events were confined to a small area of hotels with pre-existing cameras and built-in security.
“It’s not like that in a city like New Orleans, where the Super Bowl is at the Superdome, two miles away is the convention center where the NFL fan experience is going, and another mile and a half is the NFL Honors at Saenger Theater,” said DeLaune, a Louisiana native. “And all of these people are wandering amongst those three places to the parties in the Warehouse District, Frenchman’s Street, to parties on Bourbon Street throughout the French Quarter.”
Wexler said to prepare, planners study previous attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing as well as more mundane, but equally concerning, security threats like the gunfight that broke out at last year’s Super Bowl parade in Kansas City.
“It wasn’t a terrorist attack, it was individuals who had firearms,” Wexler said. “So we’re talking about what happened in New Orleans, but we should also be thinking about what happened in Kansas City and what happened in Boston, because each of those events really just add on to the security precautions that are necessary.”
DeLaune said law enforcement will be rolling out a public campaign this week to encourage people to speak up, whether they see something suspicious in person or online. He urged people everywhere, not just in Louisiana, to report tips.
“A lot of times people are intimidated by the process of reporting things because they’re concerned they’re going to look foolish if it turns out to be nothing,” DeLaune said. “We’re not concerned about that. We want you to know if you see something that concerns you, if there’s something odd or different, speak up. Let us know.”
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