Redwood City Police To Ramp Up Security At Public Events

REDWOOD CITY, CA — The Redwood City Police Department plans to increase security at public events, citing "recent tragic events" nearby and around the country, it said in a release Tuesday.

The measures will include conducting threat assessments of each event, using barriers and blocking vehicles to stop vehicle attacks and adding officers positioned in elevated areas to observe each event.

The department did not specify which tragic events prompted the new policy. But in April, a man was charged with a hate crime after intentionally running down eight pedestrians with his car in Sunnyvale. And a pedestrian was killed in Cupertino last month after a woman struck him with her car in a seemingly random attack.

The department's new security measures also include:

• Increased coordination with event organizers and city officials
• Setting up fencing and other barriers to improve crowd control
• Adding tactical personnel with specialized equipment
• Distributing mass casualty medical triage kits
• Adding uniformed and non-uniformed police officers

The department hopes the measures will "dissuade criminals from carrying out acts of violence, troubleshoot potential threats, provide a sense of comfort for event attendees, and reduce our emergency response time to a critical incident," it said.