INDIANAPOLIS -
Police added high-tech to their street patrols to control crowds during Super Bowl week.
Officers downtown used new technology and old-fashioned police work to monitor the record-breaking crowd in Super Bowl Village. Sommei O'Connor was one of the more than a million people who packed Georgia Street.
"I felt very safe. I came with my friend. I came on Tuesday, then on Friday, my friend wanted her grandson to come," O'Connor said.
The new technology includes software called "digital sandbox." Icons on a map alerted officers about incidents as they happened, prompting video from street cameras and the police helicopter.
"During the Super Bowl, this was a live picture," said Public Safety Director Dr. Frank Straub.
Straub stresses the technology gave emergency crews the advantage. Indianapolis' new regional operation center served as the brain of Super Bowl security, as dispatchers sent video or photos directly to officers on foot. Straub demonstrated the approach with a police snapshot of Georgia Street last Friday, when the crowds grew the largest.
"A standing camera could look in on that and send the image to everybody's iPhone, or to their Droid, or their iPad," Straub said.
Police not only watched from their cameras and police helicopter, but also from a third-story window, giving them the ability to be "Johnny on the Spot" every time something happened.
"They were looking down on the crowd doing an assessment on how many people, is there something going on in the crowds?" Straub said.
O'Connor felt so safe in the Super Bowl crowds, she made a second trip to Georgia Street, knowing she would see officers watching out for everyone's safety throughout Super Bowl Village.
