New security threat: Aerial assaults
Itwas a “watershed” attack, “one in amillion,” an all-but-unforeseeable “black swan.” In the aftermath of themass shooting at the Las Vegas countrymusic festival, event security professionals — manywith years of experience thwarting bad actors in bustling crowds — are characterizing the ambush indarkly exceptional, almost fatalistic terms. But they are also reckoningwith ever-changing threats in their field after the aerial assaults that killed at least 59 people and injuredmore than 520.
The specter of calamity is especiallyworrisome for openair events in urban environments.
“There is nomanual for this,” said Chris Robinette, president of Prevent Advisors, a security subsidiary of Oak View Partners, a company that advises sports and entertainment venues like Madison Square Garden. “It is a dynamic process that requires promoters, venue managers, local authorities and other stakeholders to work together.”
What has been done before the Las Vegas attack?
Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, standard security protocol at concerts, festivals and other large entertainment events has become increasingly sophisticated, mirroring the mainstream adoption of previously unheard-of safety precautions at airports around the country. Music gatherings — long bastions of ephemeral intimacy and relaxed inhibitions — have become the site of bomb-sniffing dogs, body scanners and high-definition closed circuit cameras, particularly in the wake of recent large-scale attacks on concerts from the Bataclan rock club in Paris to the Manchester Arena.
Jeff Dorenfeld, amusic business professor at Berklee College of Music with a focus on touring and festivals, recalled a time when concert security barely existed. “I was at Altamont,” said Dorenfeld, who went on to tour with Ozzy Osbourne and Boston, of the 1969 concert infamous for crowd violence and several deaths. “Therewasn’t real security.”
What has changed?
Even with the gradual ratcheting up of protections, a new wave of mass casualty events has highlighted theways determined attackers can wreak havoc by shifting their focus to the areas immediately surrounding a venue.
In Las Vegas, the gunman, Stephen Paddock, executed his killing spree from a towering window at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino — around 400 yards away from the festival venue — well outside the usual security perimeter of patdowns andmetal detectors that is created for such events. He slipped the hotel’s own security apparatus and chose an open-air target that is by definition vulnerable from a high elevation. TOP: Aman in awheelchair is taken away fromthe Route 91Harvest country music festival after amass shootingOct. 1 in LasVegas, Nevada. GETTYIMAGESBOTTOM: Drapes billowout of a
DAVIDBECKER/ broken windowat theMandalayBayResort andCasinoOct. 2 on the LasVegasStrip after a deadly shooting at amusic festival.
BELOW: Police officers stand at the scene of a shooting CHURCHILL / AP
Oct. 1 near the Mandalay BayResort andCasino. Multiple victimswere being transported to hospitals after themass shooting. At least 59 peoplewere killed.
JOHNLOCHER/ AP
“We have to go back to Lee Harvey Oswald on the book depository to conjure a similar scenario,” said Steven A. Adelman, vice president of the Event Safety Alliance, by telephone Monday afternoon, referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “This really is unique.”
Louis Marciani, director of the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, struggled to imagine how a similar assault might be prevented in the future. “There’s no way that any good operation would have caught that,” he said of the shooting. “We’ve nowgot to go back to the drawing board.”
Can security be tightened around the venues?
Las Vegas Village, the site of Route 91 Harvest Festival, is owned by the same company — MGM Resorts International — as the hotel where Paddock opened fire. It is likely that there was at least some planning between the two facilities before the festival took place. (MGM has not commented.) But even if Mandalay Bay was on high alert last weekend, snaring Paddock would likely have required a level of screening that far exceeds current practices.
“You’d have to have X-ray machines and magnetometers at every single entrance,” said Adelman. “No hotel does that.”
Festival organizers could choose to avoid locations near the sorts of tall buildings that can offer gunmen cover and a clear vantage, but Adelman suggested that other loopholes would then emerge. “Do you not hold festivals near hills or tall trees?” he wondered. “Do you ban trucks?”
Dorenfeld offered a similarly rueful hypothetical. Does every festival nowhave to be like Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, “in the middle of an open field”? But he stressed that procedures are constantly evolving. “I go to these festivals and I look around and I’m so impressed,” he said. “Security is really good, and it’ll just get better.”