By Patrick May and Robert Salonga, San Jose Mercury News
Bomb-sniffing dogs at train stations. Metal-detectors in every doorway. Police sharpshooters perched on rooftops. High-tech sensors and cameras capturing every move.
Paris?
Nope. Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara.
While authorities are reluctant to share precise details about how they plan to keep us all safe two months from now — when a million people gather for the largest, most iconic sporting event in Bay Area history — industry experts and law-enforcement veterans agree on one thing: From a security standpoint, this football game, along with scores of special gatherings and corporate parties connected to it, promises to be one of the most thoroughly plotted, collaborated, technologically sophisticated sporting events America has ever seen.
"The eyes of the world will be upon us," said Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. "In light of what happened in Paris, it's no exaggeration to say that every police department in every city around the world right now is closely examining their security procedures, and we'll do everything we can to make this event safe and secure."
Coming just weeks after the terrorist attacks in France and elsewhere, this historic Super Bowl and its tangential fan fests in downtown San Francisco are now undergoing a laserlike refinement by a sprawling security apparatus — from the stadium to the surrounding region to the skies above.
Set up two years ago when Santa Clara was awarded the game, the team includes everyone from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and Department of Homeland Security all the way down to Chief Mike Sellers, the host city's top cop and the designated commander of this pop-up law-enforcement juggernaut.
It's designed to protect not just approximately 70,000 spectators at Levi's Stadium — which will be turned into a veritable Fort Knox for the Feb. 7 game — but a region pockmarked with less-secure "soft targets" such as malls, transit hubs and restaurants now seen through a lens of vulnerability because of the Islamic State-inspired assailants that terrorized the French capital last week.
Those horrific events "are a vivid reminder of the new challenges we face when trying to ensure public safety in a free society," said BART spokesman Jim Allison, whose transportation network will be both a conduit for moving visitors around as well as a constant worry for security planners.
"Certainly the attacks in Paris influence the planning for the Super Bowl and the surrounding events and, if there had been any temptation to lapse into complacency, that has now been replaced by a renewed focus."
The security machinery cranked each winter by the National Football League has been in overdrive since the 9/11 terrorism attacks made Super Bowl XXXVI the first game to be designated as a National Special Security Event by the then-Office of Homeland Security. But the Paris attacks have introduced a new layer of angst to the planning.
While the NFL won't say specifically how it has boosted security since 9/11, some of the changes — stronger security zones set up around stadiums, and more collaboration with other federal agencies, including the FBI and FEMA — are obvious to fans.
"From a risk-management standpoint, you look at foreseeability," said Jim Hutton, a security expert with more than 30 years of experience both with Procter & Gamble, where he worked on two Super Bowls, and the U.S. State Department, where his details included high-profile events at the United Nations. "But with events like the Paris attacks, I'm not sure that whole concept of foreseeability holds up anymore, because of the amorphous nature of these attacks.
"Places that heretofore had seemed safe, whether it was Mumbai, Madrid or London, weren't anymore."
With the attacks still fresh on the public's mind, residents have already started to fret about their beloved Bay Area stepping into both the world's spotlight and possibly the crosshairs of those who might want to do it harm. After all, the Super Bowl is considered an American icon by people around the world.
"I thought about it as soon as I got on BART," said Dina Marroquin of San Francisco, a 35-year-old basketball fan who had taken the train with her children to a recent Warriors game at Oracle Arena. "This is a perfect terrorism target. You can't help but think about it."
The fact that one of the Paris targets was the Stade de France also has brought increased attention to Levi's Stadium. Jeff Miller, the NFL's head of security, said the league and its partners will harness their years of experience safeguarding previous Super Bowls, employing a wide range of strategies and technologies, from strict bag checks to walk-through metal detectors to concentric rings of security around the stadium.
Experts say pre-event intelligence gathering, as well as efforts to prevent any sort of network attack by hacktivists, are also part of the overall game plan.
Referring to the Paris incidents, "in which the terrorists used active shooters as well as explosive belts and suicide vests," Miller said, "Our policies are aimed at keeping weapons and explosives far away from our stadium.
Security won't stop at that secondary perimeter, which will be set back farther from the stadium yet still will encircle it, either. Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews said recently that the city is getting help from Washington with an elaborate system of "cameras and sensors" that will be used to monitor light rail and buses operated to and from Levi's by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), effectively expanding the sphere of safety for fans.
But security challenges go far beyond the game and Levi's Stadium, as the entire region hosts private and public events during the week leading up to the bowl. Riders on BART and Muni can expect to see a stepped-up police presence on transit in San Francisco. The same goes for the VTA, whose security is overseen by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.
In San Jose, along with San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, police will be securing hotels hosting players, dignitaries and celebrities. At Mineta San Jose International Airport, whose flight path over Levi's Stadium has proved controversial, travelers can expect to see more officers at the terminals. How, if at all, flight paths will be adjusted before, during and after the game was not immediately clear.
SJPD Officer Albert Morales said one of the primary take-aways from Paris should be increased vigilance as Super Bowl fans descend on the area.
"It's an international event that draws people from all over the world," he said. "We will be vigilant and on high alert. And if people see something suspicious, we want them to go ahead and say something." Top of the list, security experts say, are suspicious bags or packages left near areas where people can congregate.
Special Agent in Charge David Johnson, who heads the FBI's San Francisco division, said that ideally, residents and visitors during Super Bowl week won't be overwhelmed by public displays of heavy security.
"Our collective goal is to provide as safe an environment as we possibly can and also make that security as minimally intrusive as we can," Johnson said. "We want people to enjoy the events."
©2015 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
