By Christina Mora, WLKY.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. —
A new permitting system will impact security at hundreds of Louisville events. Mayor Greg Fischer said the process will rely less on police officers, and more on volunteers and private companies.
Out of the about 400 permitted events last year in Louisville, 120 required some sort of police presence. The city wants to reduce police involvement and minimize road closures.
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"The whole goal behind this is to allow officers to be on the streets patrolling their designated areas," said Mitchell Burmeister, with Louisville Metro Emergency Services.
At the beginning of the year, Louisville Metro Emergency Services took over the permitting process for special events. All security plans still go through LMPD, but now they will focus on freeing up officers.
Thousands of runners will take part in Saturday's Anthem 5K. The race will likely look the same as previous years, but down the road, you may notice some differences with security.
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"LMPD's special events team will work with event producers on a case by case basis to determine the security needs and if LMPD sworn officers aren't required to let's say man a barricade or something like that, they will work to find volunteers or private security companies," said Burmeister.
Special Security Services has worked the Ironman event for the past few years. The company said their job is to observe, handle crowd control and report to officers.
"It's a huge advantage, say you have an event of ten people, instead of 10 officers, they supplement with 8 security guards and two officers, the biggest advantage obviously it frees up officers' time in order to patrol and do actual police work," said Ryan Pfister, General Manager of Special Security Services.
Read the rest of the story here.
