MASSIVE SECURITY PRESENCE IS TEAM EFFORT
A few steps inside the stadium entrance at Super Bowl 50, a uniformed member of the U.S. National Guard watched the crowd with a machine gun strapped around his chest.
He was looking for “loners,” unattended boxes or “anything suspicious,” said the Guard member, Henry Marquez.
A few feet away from him, a black dog on a leash walked by fans entering the stadium with a sign that said, “Do not pet.”
It was a “Vapor Wake” K-9 service dog, specifically trained to detect “body-worn explosives on a moving target.”
Some might describe it as a military state, an uncommon show of force amid the wine-andcheese scene in the Bay Area. But fans who attended Sunday’s game said it made them feel safer after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Besides bomb-sniffing dogs, ma- chine guns and armored trucks, several government agencies monitored the ground and the air, including the FBI, U.S. Coast Guard, California Highway Patrol and police from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Mobile Detection Deployment Units were even on hand to help detect nuclear activity.
“I would say this is something I thought twice about coming here because of how vulnerable this place would be and what a big tar- get it would be, being in Silicon Valley and Super Bowl 50,” said Mike McCarthy, 37, who traveled to the game from Pennsylvania. “I thought about it a lot, but I felt more secure seeing all the force.”
Few details were too small for security staffers. They also told news media at the game to flip over their game-access credentials so they didn’t face outward in public. That way, nobody could take a picture of a credential and attempt to gain entry with a counterfeit credential.
Lines to get into Levi’s Stadium still moved pretty quickly, considering the extra precautions. McCarthy and other fans said it took only five to 10 minutes to wait in line and get patted down by stadium security staff before walking through the metal detector.
“Listen, I don’t mind,” Denver Broncos fan Sanjay Chhabra told USA TODAY Sports about the show of force around the stadium. “I want everyone to have a fun, safe time. We should be able to watch the game happy.”
They did for the most part. From a security standpoint, it was so uneventful before the game that machine gun-toting security personnel occasionally were used as photo props. In one case, five young women asked to pose with Homeland Security police next to their armored vehicle, machine guns and all.
No news was good news in this case. “No issues to report,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said when asked about the security before the game.