KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Kansas City, where they should expect much tighter security measures than in previous years due to last month’s deadly mass shooting during the Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration.
The parade in Missouri’s largest city on Sunday will be the first mass gathering since the Feb. 14 Victory Parade.
Officers will be strategically placed along the St. Patrick’s Day parade route, police Sgt. said Phil DiMartino, although he declined to say how many would be deployed.
“There will also be an abundance of work prior to the parade to ensure it is a safe environment for everyone,” DiMartino said in an email. “Many technological tools will be deployed and there will also be plainclothes officers among the crowd.”
About 800 officers worked the Super Bowl celebration. Towards the end of the event, gunfire broke out, wounding nearly twenty people, including children, and killing a mother of two.
Two men have been charged with manslaughter and other crimes in the victory parade shooting. According to police, they were in separate groups who became irritated because they thought the other group was staring at them. Three other people were charged this week in the shooting, accused of illegally purchasing high-powered rifles and weapons with extended magazines. And two juveniles are in custody on gun-related charges and resisting arrest.
The shooting at the victory parade raised questions about whether such rallies are worth the risk, especially in Kansas City, which has one of the highest murder rates in the country. Mayor Quinton Lucas wondered aloud whether a smaller-scale party at metal-detector-protected Arrowhead Stadium might be the best option if the Chiefs win again.
While the mayor was in favor of moving forward with the St. Patrick’s Day parade, he acknowledged that it could be difficult for some to attend.
“I think many of us, especially those of us who are thinking about taking our kids somewhere, will ask ourselves, at least for a little while, ‘Is this the kind of thing we want to risk?’ said Lucas, a Democrat. “It’s a shame that this is where we have come to in America and in our city today.”
Other cities planning large parades, including St. Louis across the state, are also taking a closer look at safety after what happened in Kansas City last month.
Patrick J. McCarthy, a retired St. Louis police sergeant who worked in security for 51 years, is responsible for ensuring the security of both of the city’s major St. Patrick’s Day parades. Intensive discussions about security “began about an hour after we heard about the shooting in Kansas City,” McCarthy said.
Both parades in St. Louis — one is on Saturday downtown and the other on Sunday in the traditionally Irish area known as Dogtown — typically draw tens of thousands of people. “Why are we letting a few people ruin what should be a celebration?” McCarthy asked. “We’re not going to stop that because some people might act crazy.”
Kansas City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of the largest in the country and typically draws about 400,000 people. Event organizers and people involved in other parades in large areas met shortly after last month’s shootings to compare contingency plans and discuss best practices to address potential problems.
While police would not say how many additional officers will be working Sunday, parade committee member Erin Gabert said it will be more than in previous years. Organizers are also calling on people to leave their weapons at home. And alcohol is prohibited along the route.
Parade leaders are also urging families and groups to come up with a plan for where to park and where to meet if people become separated. Families are encouraged to have children wear something that identifies them.
Perhaps most importantly, people are urged to alert an officer or parade volunteer if they see something that concerns them.
“It’s much better to be safe than sorry,” Gabert said.
DiMartino declined to specify how police will try to prevent violence before it happens. McCarthy, who helped lead security when Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis in 1999, said some likely steps would include stationing officers on rooftops and among crowds, and using cellphone and security cameras to potentially to help identify danger.
“You look for precursors to the violence, if possible,” McCarthy said.
There are only so many things police can do to prevent violence during parades and other large public events.
During the July 4, 2022, parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, police said the gunman climbed a fire escape to sit atop a row of specialty stores and then opened fire on the crowd below, killing seven people and killing more than 30 others were injured.
Last year, seven people were injured in a shooting during a parade that was part of Boston’s annual Caribbean festival. As in Kansas City, police blamed the shooting on an altercation between two groups.
Organizers of the Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day parade are eager to show that their community can rise above the violence of a month ago.
“We are definitely bigger and better than that horrific tragedy that occurred during the Super Bowl celebration,” Gabert said. “We don’t let that define who we are as a city.”
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Salter reported from St. Louis.