Even before a gunman opened fire on Las Vegas concertgoers last Sunday night, Jamie Cole had a “bad feeling.” The Dallas, Texas, resident had tickets for the Atlanta Falcons game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but was afraid.
“I was scared,” said Cole, who wound up going to the game, but still felt like something of a target being among tens of thousands of people at a high-profile event. “It didn’t used to be that way for me.”
It’s that way for many others now in the wake of a sobering realization: An attack like recent ones in Las Vegas, London and Paris could happen anywhere. At any time. And to anyone.
That message has really hit home in Atlanta, a city that has built a big name for itself on being, well, the biggest and best at a lot of different things. During any given week, tens of thousands of people descend upon the city for sporting events, festivals, conventions and tourism-related activities. Many arrive via the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson, while many more come from as nearby as Midtown or Marietta.
They’ll keep coming. That much seems clear, even just a week after Las Vegas. But there’s an air of wariness around town these days.
“Candidly, the events that happened in Las Vegas can happen anywhere in the United States of America,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said Thursday. “The only thing you can do right now is to mount a robust level of protection.”
Reed’s remarks came during a discussion of the attack on an outdoor music festival not unlike the large events that frequently take place in Centennial Olympic Park. But the tactics keep changing in unsettling fashion:
In Las Vegas, it was a lone gunman who rained bullets from the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel. Earlier this year, suspected terrorists drove trucks into crowds in Stockholm and London. Last year, a gunman at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando killed 49 mostly young people.
“As soon as you become aware of one (method of attack) they come up with another one,” Jonesboro resident Lucy Joiner said with a sigh last week. “You’ll never really get used to that, but you can’t not live your life.”
Indeed, Joiner and three friends had just finished riding the SkyView ferris wheel downtown as part of her 81st birthday celebration. Around them were the sort of larger-than-life attractions that are part and parcel of Atlanta’s identity: the World of Coca-Cola, CNN’s world heaquarters, the Georgia Aquarium (the world’s largest) and the spectacular new Mercedes-Benz Stadium (host of college football’s national championship game in January).
These attractions, along with such one-of-a-kind events as the AJC Peachtree Road Race or 2014’s Outkast concerts in Centennial Olympic Park, are a large part of why Atlanta is “one of the five most visited cities in America,” Reed said Thursday.
Yet they’re also a source of increasing anxiety for some people who wonder when and where the next attack might happen and how safe they might be at highly visible and heavily attended events.
“What if someone wants to (attack) a large group of gay people?” asked Maisie Thompson, 30. She said recent events like the Las Vegas shootings have caused her to think about next Sunday’s Pride parade, a highlight for many people of the annual Atlanta Pride festival.
Similarly, several people asked, what if someone tries to wreak havoc on the Peachtree Road Race, when 60,000 people run down Atlanta’s signature street on July 4th, of all days? Or on the huge crowds who’ll be in town for Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in February 2019?
“I’m not worried so much about what could happen inside the stadium, where they’ll check bags and everything else,” Randy Cole, Jamie’s husband, mused aloud as they stood outside the College Football Hall of Fame, located justs blocks from the new stadium. “It’s what could happen out here in this area, where there’ll be 80,000 to 100,000 people milling about.”
None of this has escaped the attention of the people charged with putting on and protecting these events. The Atlanta Police Department will change its approach to handling large events as a result of what happened in Las Vegas, said Chief Erika Shields. In a meeting with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board last week, Shields said they’d take “more of an aerial view” to certain events — including deploying helicopters with SWAT officers trained to shoot from the air.
Even before a car ran into a crowd in Charlottesville and killed a woman protesting a white nationalism rally in August, APD had already begun strategically positioning garbage trucks “to cut off avenues” of attack at large events, Shields said. After Charlottesville, Shields appointed a deputy chief assigned to deal solely with planning for large events.
“We always have to self-examine,” Shields said. “You can never assume you have it under control. It’s very hard to anticipate what some of these individuals have proven themselves capable of.”
But organizers of some of Atlanta’s largest and most popular events are trying harder than ever to do so. None would discuss their security arrangements in detail, but ATL Pride executive director Jamie Fergerson said “security is something we think about all year and on many levels.” The annual parade and festival in Piedmont Park attracts some 250,000 people. Their safety is overseen by a mix of APD-led law enforcement, security professionals and volunteers, some of whom have been involved for over a decade.
During two regularly scheduled security meetings held last week “We talked about what happened in Las Vegas and what’s happened with a lot of attacks where cars have been driven (into groups),” Fergerson said. “We have made changes where necessary, but for the most part we were already prepared. Unfortunately, members of our community have often been targeted, so this is something we’ve planned for forever.”
Atlanta Track Club spokesman Jay Holder said they work with “every law enforcement and security agency from local to national,” including Homeland Security, on planning and ensuring the safety of the AJC Peachtree Road Race.
“You’ll see police cars all along the race route and barricades; you’re not going to see what’s really keeping you safe,” Holder said, adding that they receive threat assessments. “We try to stay a step ahead of the trends. We judge what we need and if we need to, up the ante.”
So will Atlanta, Reed suggested. Last weekend, the mayor pointed out, MARTA simulated a terror attack as part of a full-scale emergency preparedness exercise.
“I went on Twitter and talked about it because you should expect to see more kinds of rehearsals throughout the city of Atlanta,” Reed said. “The world has changed, and we are going to change with it.”
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