Detroit, NFL say 2024 draft will be secure after Kansas City Super Bowl parade mass shooting

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For the first time, America’s most popular sport intersected with America’s most terrifying trend. Now that a mass shooting has occurred at the Kansas City parade and rally following the Chiefs’ latest Super Bowl win, it’s fair to wonder whether other places where thousands of football fans gather can or will be secure.

The next significant event happens in two months in Detroit, where the NFL draft will make its latest stop since becoming a road show nine years ago. Via Mike Jones of TheAthletic.com, both Detroit and the NFL insist that the draft will be safe.

“We have been in full preparation mode for months and are confident in our safety plan,” Detroit Police Chief James E. White said in a statement, via Jones. “The City of Detroit has hosted several large-scale, successful events recently, including the Ford Fireworks, the Detroit Grand Prix, America’s Thanksgiving Parade and Lions games with more than 70,000 fans in attendance, as well as many other events and concerts. Taking from those experiences, we have built our safety strategy and are confident this plan will ensure the safety of all in attendance at the draft and the surrounding areas.”

Jones adds that the NFL expressed similar confidence in the plans for keeping the Detroit draft secure.

But can safety ever truly be guaranteed in situations like this? Absent a hard perimeter with metal detectors and wands, there’s always a chance someone will show up with a gun and start shooting. It now happens every day in this country, somewhere.

Wherever that perimeter might be, people will be congregating there in order to pass through it. That’s where the shooting can happen.

And that’s the biggest challenge for the NFL, in any situation like this. It’s one thing to secure the interior of a stadium. At some point, there will be an unsecure area through which people must pass to get to the safe place.

In Kansas City, more than 800 law-enforcement officers were present. A mass shooting still happened.

The…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/detroit-nfl-2024-draft-secure-164900585.html

Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports

Publish date : 2024-02-18 16:49:00

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