LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Formula 1 festivities are set to begin on Thursday.
Las Vegas Metro Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill is responsible for ensuring it goes off safely. He shared his experience with high-profile events like F1 and the Super Bowl.
FOX5 learned some of the new technology and tactics that will come into play this week ahead of F1.
Huck: Do you feel you are ready for this?
McMahill: I am in a much better place as far as readiness than I was the first year. But listen, I’m going to just be completely candid with you. We know Las Vegas is a target. It always has been. And what I will tell you is, is that I plan for every single one of these special events that we have on our strip, like it’s going to be attacked or something is going to happen.
We treat f1 very similar to what we do with New Year’s Eve. The planning for both of those events starts within weeks. Of them actually ending from the year prior.
Huck: Are there any credible threats being investigated?
McMahill: I wouldn’t say there’s any credible threats that were are being investigated, but I will tell you that there’s always persons of interest that we’re paying attention to whenever Las Vegas is in the spotlight of a national event that people are paying and in this case, this is an international event, right?
People all around the world are tuning in to watch what happens in these races. So we’re constantly paying attention to all of those threats that emerge, not only through our federal partnerships, but through my own counterterrorism section that we have. We.
Huck: Will people notice anything different? Or is this something where you try to kind of blend in with the crowds?
McMahill: No, really interesting question. I try to have a really highly visible presence of our officers. But also, in this case, we’re partnering with about 1200 private security officers.
We want them to have a very visible presence for deterrence number one, but also number two is if you think you’re going to get away with something, you know you’re not, because you’re not going to go five feet without seeing a cop, right?
And so, but let me just tell you this part without exposing too much, there’s a whole lot of people that are police officers and law enforcement in and amongst those crowds that you’re not going to know that are law enforcement.
Huck: Any new technology being deployed?
McMahill: Lots of technology being deployed. So I think the question keeps getting asked about, am I going to be flying drones? You know, I have a new drone as a first responder program. We can’t have other people flying drones over the raceway, for obvious reasons.
So we have drone mitigation technology that we have out there. So lots of lots of technology that we’re using, and it’s just a force multiplier.
As you well know, I know you’ve seen our Real Time Crime Center, but 1000s of public safety cameras that are down there, license plate readers, all the things that we have in our toolbox are being utilized to keep the community safe during this time.
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