Special Events Planning

Best Practices aMaury MurgaDo

Major SPeCial eventS Planning Preparing for any large public gathering is all about contingencies. olice officers around the world share many common issues; they deal with organized crime, inefficient bureaucracies, a lack of manpower, and a diverse list of threats against their communities. As if these issues were not enough, most agencies must facilitate crowd control and provide security for several major special events throughout the year. These may include anything from a presidential visit to a rival high school football game.

If you’ve worked one of these events, you know that the plan is only good up to the point of execution. Once the event starts, anything can happen. In other words, don’t fight Murphy’s Law but instead, embrace it as your credo; anything that can go wrong, will. The best time to handle a problem is before it ever starts, so incorporating contingency planning is critical to a successful event.

a PlaCe to Start If you are tasked with handling crowd control and all of the other issues related

down. Applying this method helps you evaluate past and present considerations.

If you want to trade your new idea for one done in the past, utilize it if it makes things more efficient (trading up).

If using your idea causes the results to be the same (trading sideways) then leave it alone; why waste time and energy unnecessarily? If your idea creates other issues, (trading down), then leave the old idea in place and move on.

Keep in mind that change, just for the sake of change, rarely works well. Your primary planning priorities are about accomplishing the mission, not making a name for yourself. The fact that you pull off a successful event should give you all the warm and cozy feelings you need. If you need more attention than that, buy a dog.

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Don’t reinvent tHe WHeel After you have reviewed past events,

you can start the planning process. to a major special event in your commuSince getting organized is always the nity, first review how the event was hanhardest part, I try to avoid replicating dled in the past and use it as your starting other people’s work. One great source Providing security for a public point. Hopefully, your predecessor had a for getting organized is FEMA’s indeevent is not just about presence, working fi le that included an operations pendent study course, IS-15.b, “Special it's about planning. plan and an after action report (AAR). If Events Contingency Planning for Public not, then your only other option is to meet with the mem- Safety Agencies.” This Web-based course provides officers bers of the past detail and pick their brains. with information related to “pre-event planning, forming Assuming that you do have a working fi le, keep two things the planning team, event hazard analysis, and respondin mind as you read through it: If it isn’t broken, don’t fi x it; ing to incidents during special events in their community.” and just because it was done a certain way then, doesn’t There is also an extensive job aid manual that is included in mean you have to do it that way now. These may sound the course and available for download. My favorite part is somewhat contradictory but they are actually two sides of the series of checklists that you can print and use as a planthe same coin. ning guide.

Take a past traffic flow solution, for example. Just because If you haven’t already taken the course, I highly recomit worked doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon. The trick mend that you do. At a minimum, I suggest you download is to think in terms of what I call the “Trading Axiom.” It all the materials and use the multiple checklists. I even go states that you should always trade up; never sideways or so far as to present the checklists to my counterparts dur16

POLICE APRIL 2011

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Best Practices ing pre-event planning. I recommend that they study the course as well. The reason I stress this material so much is that it helps everyone involved, police and otherwise, to have a common base of knowledge. You have to know what you are talking about in order to talk about it.

Being able to point to an established reference helps you make suggestions that are beyond the realm of your responsibility. For example, most of the time law enforcement works the security angle, but it’s been hard for me to sit quiet in a meeting when I have realized a critical issue has been overlooked. Pointing to the FEMA checklist has helped me draw attention to a potential risk that, more often than not, has led to a discussion on how to mitigate it.

activity, you can graduate to the “what the hell” questions. You know, like when you hear an explosion, turn, and say, “What the hell?”

So, what is your contingency plan for a hostage-taking emotionally disturbed person, an active shooter, a riot, or a terrorist attack? If you’re thinking planning for a terrorist attack is a bit over the top, let me reframe the issue for you. Aside from the potential death, mayhem, and destruction a suicide bomber might cause, if you didn’t consider it, when it is all said and done, who do you think they are going to blame for the mess?

Contingency Planning Former WWII Supreme Allied Com-

mander and President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted as saying, “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.” What he was referring to was contingency planning. The bigEvents are fluid and law enforcement has to be gest gift you can give yourself during willing and able to respond to the unexpected. a planning cycle is to play the “what After the agency gets reamed in the meif” game. You and your planning partners need to sit down at some point and fire off dia, they always get rid of the lowest common denominator…you. The unspoken possible scenarios at each other.

For example, it might go something like collateral damage in any bureaucracy is this. You’re at a planning meeting and you always the scapegoat. Therefore, anything turn to your counterpart, Mr. Shaw, and that involves large gatherings is suspect and deserves the best planning possible. ask him the following questions.

There are limits to any organization and it H W hat if it rains? may come down to just having a few extra H W hat if more people show up than officers on site, identifying a landing zone expected? nearby for MEDEVAC, establishing a posH W hat if someone has a medical emersible staging area in case of an emergency, gency? and briefing any surrounding agencies in H W hat if there is an accident in front of case you call for assistance. It may be very the venue entrance? minimalistic, but it still qualifies as conH W hat if it gets too hot and there are tingency planning in anybody’s book. heat casualties?

H W hat if there is a bomb threat?

H W hat if we run out of parking?

Horses, Dancers, H W hat if the opposition stages a and The Three Kings counter-demonstration?

For the last seven years, my jurisdiction’s Believe it or not, all of these things have Hispanic community has celebrated a happened to me and I consider myself holiday related to Christmas often called lucky because they only represent a small “The Three Kings.” The local Hispanic fraction of what could have happened.

Business Council sponsors this event, Once you “what if” common issues like which typically draws between 5,000 and weather, traffic flow, and normal criminal 8,000 attendees. It’s an event that offers 18

POLICE APRIL 2011

free food, music, toys for children 12 and under, and a raffle of between 25 and 100 free bicycles.

The venue usually stays packed the entire time until the last bicycle is given away. The event has always been well received and the children love it, but planning for it is a major undertaking. This was my first year running the security element for this event. It was also the first year it was held in a new location; one half the original size.

I reviewed my checklists, met with the Hispanic Business Council planners, and conducted several site surveys with them and later with members of my command and control team. I also conferred with past lieutenants and created a new operations plan. During the planning, I brought attention to as many possible threats and concerns as I felt necessary. Some were considered and some were not. Regardless, everything was documented and I hit the ground running.

I arrived early and observed things unfolding quickly. Two hours before the start there was already a line that stretched a quarter of a mile long and parking was filling up. I realized immediately that my planned overflow parking was not going to be enough. Furthermore, my security and traffic detail wasn’t even scheduled to be in place yet so I couldn’t do anything about it. Then, 20 minutes before the actual start, I got hit with the first big operational change.

One of three Hispanic Business Council coordinators had asked a local Hispanic Paso Fino horse club to participate in the kick-off. These horses perform with a fancy gait and are a marvelous sight to see. The club brought eight horses, a truck and trailer full of singers and musicians, and an additional set of Three Kings actors that needed costumes in order to make their grand entrance. The problem was no one had told me.

Major Special Event Planning Tips 1 2 3 4 5

Special events planning is a part of life.

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Trading Axiom: always trade up.

Checklists are a great starting point.

Play the “what if” game.

Right before it happened, I was told only that the club was presenting a horse and buggy. That was an understatement.

When this group arrived, it consisted of more members, support people, vehicles, and horses than I had officers present.

There was no planning for their parking or for creating a staging area. But more importantly, we didn’t have time to adjust our crowd control plans. As I tried frantically to adjust in vain, the entourage came across and 300 parents and children simultaneously break ranks and rush forward in order to get a closer look and take pictures.

There would be many more hiccups caused by the smaller venue that went beyond my planning. It’s true when they say the devil is in the details. To our credit, however, all we suffered were two sets of temporarily missing children and an elderly woman nearly fainting because she had not taken her blood pressure medication.

At our post-event debriefing a week later with the Hispanic Business Council, we candidly discussed our strengths and weaknesses, and eventually came up with a list of lessons learned. I later assembled all of this information into an after action report and gave everyone involved a copy.

Our hard work paid off and we are already well ahead of the game for next year.

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Final Thoughts In addition to the independent study course from FEMA, you can find other

good reference materials for such events, including one from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) called “Planning and Managing Security for Major Special Events.� Taking the time to do your research will be well worth the effort.

Just because you have limited resources doesn’t mean you have limited liability.

Learn to deal with Murphy’s Law in a productive way because anything that can happen usually does.

THE ULTRA-EFFECTIVE MULTI-PURPOSE EID

Amaury Murgado is a retired Army Reserve Master Sergeant with more than 30 years of martial arts experience who currently serves as the Special Operations Lieutenant for the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in Kissimmee, Florida.

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