Green Bay, Wis. ā population 106,000 ā is used to welcoming 75,000 people to the city on fall Sundays when the Packers are playing at Lambeau Field, but that number could more than triple next April during the 2025 NFL Draft.
According to local Fox affiliate WLUK, as the Green Bay area prepares to host the draft, public safety agencies are taking a closer look at risk assessment to see what they can do to be better prepared. Crowd management versus crowd control was the topic of discussion during a training for law enforcement and venue personnel in Green Bay this week.
"When we're event planning, we're in crowd management. If our event turns into an incident, then we're in a crowd control situation," Steve Miller an instructor with TEEX/NCS4, told WLUK.
The training comes as Green Bay, which already deals with big crowds during Packers games and other events in the Stadium District, is preparing to see upwards of a quarter of a million people converging on the area for next year's NFL Draft.
According to Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis, "This is part of a much larger project to plan for the 2025 NFL Draft. We need to make sure all of our training and managing big public events is up to date."
Green Bay police are hosting the training, which also involves input from Texas A&M's Engineering Extension Service, The National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security at the University of Southern Mississippi, FEMA and Homeland Security.
"Just here this morning,we were talking about line queue and how we form lines to come into a venue, and the flow rate at which people enter a venue," Miller told WLUK. "If people aren't real happy coming into a venue, they could cause issues outside and then that ends up taking resources away from inside the venue. Law enforcement has to respond to put out something that may have been, could have been better planned."
While the national recommendation for crowd management is one crowd manager for every 250 event attendees, it's not always possible," WLUK's Emily Matesic reported. Green Bay police recognize this is not a major metropolitan city with endless resources, which is why training like this is important ahead of the draft.
City officials are heading to Detroit next week to observe the 2024 NFL Draft.
"What you don't want to do is just assume that because we are an NFL city, we do these events all the time, that we've got it all figured out," Davis told WLUK. "So there have been lots of those things that I know I've taken away, and our team has taken away, from this training, and I'm sure there will be even more in Detroit next week."
