Leading Las Vegas

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Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us. This is Kelsey Rathke. And today we are joined by two experts in the field of event planning and crowd security. In a typical year, we attend dozens of events of all types and sizes. But how much do we really know about what is going on behind the scenes to keep us safe? And do we really know how to keep ourselves safe? While many events were canceled in 2020, we did see mass movements of people this year across the country responding to the death of George Floyd, protesting public health restrictions, and mobilizing around the recent election. These types of events present special challenges for those in attendance, as well as those who are working to keep the events safe. We were lucky enough to discuss these issues and more with Dr. Tamara Harreld, Director director of the Crowd Management Research Center at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Sergeant Timothy Fredricks from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's event planning section. Sergeant Timothy Fredricks oversees much of the department's work for event planning in and around Las Vegas. He has extensive experience working a wide range of events and responding to emergency situations that do arise, including working with first responders to secure and save lives in the October 1st mass shooting. We started off by discussing Sergeant Frederick's role in the event planning branch of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department to understand how events come into their purview.

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I work in our events planning section for Las Vegas Metro. I worked there as an officer, and then I promoted, and then I ended up coming back as a sergeant. So I've been at it for a little while. Basically, the way events come to the events planning section are kind of twofold. One would be the typical things you see, the nights, games, festivals, rock and roll marathon, all those are reimbursable events. And what I mean by that is the venue pays for the officers to be there. So they're not leaving your neighborhoods and your communities to staff a for-profit event. So the other way they can come to us is things that aren't necessarily reimbursable, things like motorcades for the president or vice president, or generally speaking, if there's a protest or some form of demonstration. We don't typically do the planning for that per policy if on the area command that it's occurring in, but we do assist. We give some knowledge as to how best to make things flow and work, and then if they need assistance with staffing, we can provide them with some resources like that. So that's kind of how events filter towards us.

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After learning about how events come to the attention of the event planning section, we discussed with Sgt. Frederick the lengthy process of logistically planning and preparing for events, ranging from smaller sporting events to larger music festivals.

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So you have to look at each individual spot, what that officer's, you know, what the purpose for your control of maybe a traffic intersection or, you know, for UFC or boxing fights. When you get to the interior, you have the officers who stand around. There's, you know, the four corners of the ring, so to speak. So you have officers there, but you also need the request from UFC or the boxing promoter is, you know, you have officers escort the fighters. So as they walk into the arena. So it's just some, some of the requirements that maybe the venue has. And then what I look at is I try to, I try to put the officers where I think you get the most bang for the buck, so to speak. And then you, you know, you try to build in, you have to build in supervision, of course. So then, you know, sergeants, lieutenants, et cetera, and even, even a couple extra officers for, for breaks. If it's a longer event, they can go around and break the individual positions, or just if something comes up that you weren't really expecting, you have an officer, you know, a couple officers to go help with that. You know, if there's any other task-based things, you just kind of build that into your plan. What sometimes we do, if we know we need a lot of officers, you know, maybe at the end of an event, like a festival, sometimes we'll bring in an early group of officers and then, you know, a few hours late, because you don't need 100 officers at the beginning of an event. Let's say you might, you know, need 30, 40 to get it going. And then during prime time, you need the 100 officers so you can split the shifts that way. And it helps save the venue some money as well.

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A lot of work goes into planning events, from determining the amount of police present, types of security screenings, and even emergency evacuation plans. However, to properly manage and plan for these events, one must first understand the science behind crowd management. Dr. Tamara Harreld is an American crime scientist and is an associate professor of criminal justice and the graduate director at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She serves as director of the Crowd Management Research Council and associate director of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy. Dr. Harreld has presented, trained, and is published widely with a focus on crowd science and de-escalation. We asked Dr. Harreld exactly what the science behind crowd management is and how it is applied by people like Sergeant Frederick? Well it's really interesting

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because we've made such advances in the last 20, 30, 40 years in understanding crowds and crowd dynamics. A lot of it has come out of mathematics and some of the modeling that we do around how crowds move, crowd flow under different conditions, whether it's just normal crowd conditions or whether it's during an emergency type event. So we've learned a lot from those models, but those models are imperfect. So when I'm teaching about crowds and crowd dynamics, whether it's security personnel or if it's a brand new police recruit class, you know, I have them think of a crowd much like the human body. And the human body is made up of something like a trillion cells or so they tell me, right? Tons of cells. But all of those cells have, so many of them have different functions. And if you look at a crowd, part of the problem with the mathematical models that we have to try to simulate crowd dynamics is that we assume every individual is the same and that they're all acting independently, and that's just not true. If you look at a crowd and you watch the way that crowds behave, most people don't go to events alone, and a few do, but most people travel in groups, and that definitely changes the dynamics of crowds and how crowds behave. And not everybody is the same. You know, you deal with people who might have different types of disabilities, you have older people, younger people, tall people, short people, and so we can never possibly model all of these different dynamics for all the different contexts that we might face.

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Crowd theory is extremely important to think about when planning and preparing for events. No one crowd is ever the same, and therefore, each event must be thought out differently to meet the needs of that specific crowd. For example, the needs of a crowd attending a music festival are going to be extremely different than a crowd at a peaceful protest. In this next section, Dr. Harreld explains the different needs of a crowd.

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And that is, I really think the best science is solid theory, right? A solid framework for understanding what it is that you're dealing with. So it's not, it's not the type of science that the hard sciences, all hard sciences are governed by different theories, right? That explain the way the world works. And we test those theories. We in the social sciences, we have hundreds and thousands and they're all there, we're littered with theories. They're all over the place. We can't ever really disprove our theories in the traditional sense that we do, the way that we do in the hard sciences. So having really solid, accurate theories and frameworks that are really useful for practitioners is so helpful. I was talking with a police chief who came up to me who knew I did have this background. He said, I really need your help. He said, you know, I went in one night and I was really tough on the protesters and that backfired. And I got a lot of negative press and it didn't seem like we were able to tap down the violence, he said. And then, the next night we went in with velvet gloves and we thought, all right, we'll take a softer approach to this, he said. And the violence was out of control. And we were criticized again, he said. I really need to know what to do. How should I do this? And it struck me that I can't go in and tell this chief of police, this is how you do it. What he needs is a framework for understanding the psychology of protest crowds, for understanding when and how to deploy different types of strategies when they're most likely to be effective. And so what he really needed was solid theory. He just had no framework from which to even think about managing these protests. So.

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There are many different scenarios that emergency managers must consider when preparing for an event. Medical emergencies and violence are often top of mind. However, there are many other variables that emergency managers must consider. We asked Sergeant Frederick to explain those different variables.

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We all worked together to do it. The RISE Festival was one down on the dry lake bed just south of town. We actually have the National Weather Service out there, the NOAA out there with us, and it's amazing how correct they can predict the weather. The one day we did have to evacuate the entire thing and, you know, it was to the point where he said you are going to have a massive thunderstorm in 45 minutes. And just working with, you know, that particular person, we know him, we're like, he's spot on, we need to move these people. So trying to get 1000s of people out of a dry lake bed, you know, with limited infrastructure, you know, we did it, we made it work. But that's definitely something to worry about, you know, looking at EDC, they used to have the event in June, right? We'd have 1000s of medical calls, people just dehydrated, not able to handle dehydration, you know, narcotics use, drinking too much, all that stuff, you know, maybe plays plays effect. People just get tired, right? So we'd have thousands of medical calls because of the heat as a driver. But when they moved it back to May, over the past couple of years, the amount of medical calls diminished drastically. Having worked in that command post for years, you know, when it was in June, I'd sit next to the medical guy and he and I were constantly your horse at the end of the night talking about medical calls and just trying to keep track of who's what. Because our office, people would come up to our officers needing medical. So that's even, that's even something that we consider, you know, time of year and the weather, especially here in Las Vegas.

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After discussing the different variables that must be accounted for when preparing for an event, we wanted to shift our focus to understand the role technology plays in event planning. Technology in every aspect of life is always changing, and the same can be said about the technology being used in event planning. Next, we talked with both Dr. Harreld and Sergeant Frederick about the large role that technology now plays in the field of event planning.

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You see all the technologies on both sides. It's almost like a game of chess, right? So somebody, you know, we figure out a new technology, the crowd figures out a new technology and vice versa, and then you're kind of going back and forth and back and forth. I think you mentioned protest. It's so fascinating. If you guys have been paying attention to all the civil unrest going on across the country, some of the tactics used by the protesters, silly, basic technology, but I don't know if you're following this, where if the police were trying to disperse people using tear gas, what they would do is they would show up to these protests with leaf blowers and blow, right, the gas back onto the front lines of the officers. So, so interesting, again, game of chess, how you move, you know, how, you know, the types of technologies that we're using and then watching how the crowd reacts to that and then adapts their technology. It is absolutely fascinating. I can say, also related to your question, we have adopted more less lethal options. So you see beanbags or other things, but I'll use that term less lethal because although they're less lethal, it does not mean that they're not lethal. You know, some of our technologies are so helpful because they do help to preserve life. They're less lethal, but it doesn't mean that they're not lethal in some regard. And there's always a risk when we're deploying any type of technology into a crowd, right? Where we're not completely focused in on one particular target. So one of the things that we've learned over the past several years is to be as focused as possible in our approach to preventing violence. That we don't target an entire crowd indiscriminately, that we really focus in on just the conditions or the people that are causing harm. And that has really benefited us over the years. We've gotten much better about doing that.

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Dr. Harrell did a great job highlighting the role of technology in crowd management. Sergeant Frederick speaks more specifically about the role of video technology and other more old-fashioned techniques his team uses to plan events and manage crowds.

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Having solid video feeds into a command post, you know, with pan, tilt, zoom, high-end cameras that are good day and night, that's huge for providing the overall commander situational awareness. Being able to look at something very specific, a person-specific, person-specific group of people, all the way out to being able to see, you know, far down, let's say Frank Sinatra drive, to see what traffic really looks like because that's going to play a part too. So that's honestly having that filter into a command post to giving that commander situational awareness is huge. And even to the point of, you know, where the officers really are on ground. Some of the planning techniques I've taken, I was in the Nevada National Guard for ages. And a lot of the training, you know, the military's figured out planning to the nth degree, right? So, you know, I recycle a lot of their stuff. And it's very old school, so to speak, but we make maps of the venue and place on there where the officers are, laminate it, use a little alcohol pens to move them around. Again, it's kind of old school, but it helps with the command and control function of it. And then, you know, during the event itself, a lot of them, many of them, we have a video feed footage into the command post to give us some indication as to, you know, where people are moving from, where they're coming, scan for threats, things like that, that, you know, you might see the little, maybe you do see the camera tower that has the little blinking red and blue lights, but, you know, down on Las Vegas Boulevard, there's thousands of cameras out there that, you know, on New Year's Eve, let's say, we can, we can find, you know, a problem in the crowd or maybe the pedestrian rails is too constrictive in an area so we can have our officers pull it back. In instances like those, you know, the people, you know, maybe they just see some officers pulling pedestrian rail back all of a sudden, well, there's a conscious decision back in the command post or...

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Dr. Harold was able to expand on the topic of video surveillance and its growing importance in the realm of event planning, highlighting technological advancements such as artificial intelligence.

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There is software that's built into our CCTV cameras that can detect anomalies. So it's really interesting. You're always looking in a crowd if you're trying to keep people safe, the thing you're looking for is the thing that sticks out. If you study people who do pickpocketing, it's fascinating, they're always moving against the crowd or they're moving in a very erratic way. It's one of the easiest ways to pick out a pickpocketer when you're watching a CCTV camera. Well, now we have through AI and a lot of other technological advances, we have software that does this for us. So it helps us because you're looking at a sea of people, how can you possibly identify every potential interaction that could become problematic? We can't, but with the help of technology, we can focus our attention in on very specific places, people that it triggers us to say, hey, look over here. It may or may not be an issue, but look over here in a way that we couldn't do when we were just watching thousands of people on a TV screen. So that's some really interesting and useful new technological advances in that area.

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Technology, without a doubt, plays a major role on the effectiveness of event planning. For most of the work is still conducted by the men and women of emergency agencies. At any major event, you will likely run into different types of emergency personnel, such as police officers and paramedics. Next, we discussed with Sergeant Frederick the additional emergency responders outside of police officers and paramedics who staff these events, yet are hardly ever noticed.

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You know, at many of the events you'll have that uniformed component, but you'll also have a plainclothes component of officers who, you know, are there looking for any kind of suspicious situations, maybe conduct counter surveillance, watch, you know, people may be acting suspiciously, things like that, to help mitigate that. And then, I guess last, there's a lot of other resources that we can bring to bear at an event should we feel that we need them, such as SWAT or, it's not exactly the bomb squad, but between Las Vegas Metro and Las Vegas Pirate Rescue, we have the armor concept, which is any kind of C-burn things, and then the fire department has the actual bomb technicians and things like that. They're not right on top of the event, but they're staged somewhere else, so typically we'll have things staged other places. Even command and control nodes, they're not necessarily on-site as well. We do have some form of command on-site, but during the bigger events, there's an off-site command element so that we can bring more resources should we need it, and they can come in effectively.

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To wrap up our discussion of crowd science and technology and emergency management, we asked Dr. Harreld what she would do to advance the field if she had $20 million.

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You know, it's so neat when I'm training individuals on how to approach security in a venue, we start talking about the number of touch points that we have with people before they ever even get in the front gate. And there's something like on average 11. And so at each of those stages, there is something to be learned about how we can do things better, how we can detect potential threats at every single step along the way. So if I had $20 million first, I would say thank you. And then I would say that's not nearly enough. Like we need way more than this, because there's no way we can answer all the really cool questions. But I'm really passionate about dynamics that trigger violence in crowds. And so I'm passionate about some of those micro level human interactions and de-escalation. In criminal justice until 2020, there was other than CIT, sort of the crisis intervention teams in policing, other than some research on them, there had not been one evaluation of de-escalation training in criminal justice. Not one. And so to me, that just seems ridiculous, right? That we're not doing evaluations, we're training, spending millions and millions, if not billions of dollars on these trainings across the United States to help people understand how to de-escalate situations, and we don't even know if they're working.

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On October 1st, 2017, the deadliest mass shooting in America took place in Las Vegas, Nevada. A single gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival, killing 61 people and wounding 411. In the days leading up to the event, Sergeant Frederick worked to design emergency evacuation routes, different types of emergency responses, and protocols for the event. In this next section, we discuss with Sergeant Frederick the different strategies that were put into place beforehand that were so important for responding to the attack.

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Well, honestly, I have to praise the officers who were out there with us that night. They just sprang into action. You know, it's what you're trained to do, it's what you're supposed to do, but they really did a great job. One of the things I added, not all of our officers are rifle carriers, rifle certified. I've always been a big proponent of having specific equipment. So we have a way to staff rifle qualified officers, different spots. So I had added rifle officers to the traffic spots, basically surrounding the venue. And one of the things, our officers got up to that room so fast and, you know, in my heart, looking back on it, one of the big wins there is one of those rifle officers who we added, it could have been, you know, just, you know, a regular officer. He made it up to the floor and he made it, you know, to the room. So looking at it from a safety perspective there, that item, you know, that's just very one, very small, minute item that I added, it worked. We got that piece of equipment where it needed to be essentially. Overall, I think the plan worked. The officers sprang to action quickly. We had talked about where to push people. 50 or so officers can't really impact 20,000 people where they're going to go, but you can help provide some direction. Honestly, the direction is towards where there's other resources, towards those other casinos where there are extra security people, there are extra medical people, there's food, there's shelter, there's water, there's all those things.

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Sergeant Frederick continued by recognizing the vital role that attendees played in helping officers that night.

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One other thing that is kind of intangible that just worked out in our favor was the crowd who was there. I can't tell you how many times during, it was a little bit of a blur, but during the heat of it, you'd have people run up to you. I'm a cop from wherever, I'm a firefighter from wherever, I'm in the army, I'm a medic in the Air Force or something like that, what can I do? And so that was a force multiplier right there. The people who were at the event had some knowledge, experience, training, and they sprung into action to help one another, which was huge. That took pressure off of us, you know, because as officers were moving towards a threat and trying to mitigate some different things, you know, you had people essentially being stretcher bearers and, you know, using the pedestrian rail, the bike rack stuff to use as like a litter to transport people who couldn't walk or what have you. That was definitely a positive thing that came out of it. I can't leave that one alone. I can't say enough for those people that, you know, actually like stepped up and helped in the middle of it.

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After hearing the praise that Sergeant Frederick gave the attendees of the Route 91 festival, we felt it was fitting to ask him what we, as attendees, can do to keep ourselves safe at the events we attend. Well, plan ahead. Figure out how you're going to get there,

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where you're going to park, how you're going to, whether you're going to walk or take some form of public transportation to get there, have multiple plans, you know, if this parking garage is full, where do I go now? If there's an app or follow it on social media, that's a way that a lot of these venues, the big ones in particular, they push a lot of information that way. And then when they're there, think about who's around you and what's around you and where simple things are, where maybe if you see a medical tent, put that in the back of your head, because even if you twist your ankle, when you have to get some form of medical attention, maybe you're ambulatory enough to get over there yourself, right? But you know where that is. Know where exits are. It's huge. And then they have a plan on how to get out at the end of the event. Understand that there's probably going to be some traffic. Make some considerations that if you are going to use public transportation, it's going to get overloaded a little bit on the tail, on coming out versus coming in.

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Lastly, we asked Sergeant Frederick what attendees should do if there is an emergency at an event they attend.

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Know how to get out, like I said before, have maybe a waypoint or something in your head. If you're willing and able to help and, you know, maybe you can find but if let's just say blood scares you, or you don't really have a ton of medical training or anything like that. Get away, get you know whoever you're there with, stay with them, get somewhere away, because you know in the heat of things, the fewer people you have to deal with in the middle of a situation, the better. So, you know, if you do feel scared, you feel like you can't be an immediate help. Go somewhere where you can maybe find shelter. Find an alternate way home because you're going to have to, like I said, you're going to have to get home somehow.

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As this podcast comes to an end, on behalf of my team, as well as my fellow classmates, we hope that you have learned something new about all of the planning that goes into large events. Dr. Harold and Sgt. Frederick have gone into great detail about safety being a top priority in any event and the vital role emergency management plays in the day-to-day life of the public. One of the main takeaways is to be vigilant, stay smart, and listen to direction if an emergency occurs. We hope that you have all broadened your scope of knowledge in this area while learning how to stay safe and remain observant members of society. This podcast was produced by Kelsey Raffke, Hannah Ewell, Matthew Brayton, and Patrick Kearns as a part of the Emergency and Crisis Management Master's Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Sound engineering was provided by Kevin Kral. The executive producer of In a Pickle, a Rebel Podcast is Dr. Joel Lieberman. Special thanks to our guests and to all of of In a Pickle, a Rebel Podcast is Dr. Joel Lieberman. Special thanks to our guests and to all of you for listening.

Transcribed with Cockatoo