GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – After nearly two years of planning, law enforcement is wrapping up their preparation for the NFL Draft and is ready to execute next week.
“Thinking about all our contingency planning, doing some additional training internally, visiting the site regularly, meeting with our partners, both public safety, EMS and our fire partners in this,” Green Bay Police Department Capt. Ben Allen said.
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Allen is set to retire sometime within the next six months. He has spearheaded the NFL Draft security planning, leading a multi-agency effort to keep Green Bay’s largest crowd ever safe.
But even in the twilight of his career, Allen is still learning and credits law enforcement leaders from the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit with imparting useful wisdom to him.
“The biggest advice they gave me was ‘just be patient,’” Allen said. “Plans change regularly with weather delays, and buildout, and certainly the next thing that happens.”
The time for patience is long gone, as the draft is just days away, while the impacts are even closer.
“The concern then is the days of the event itself, and then increased traffic, the number of fans that are coming into town,” Allen said. “That will certainly slow things down quite a bit.”
Allen says locals have done well with the road closures so far, but as they become more extensive and out-of-town drivers unfamiliar with the area arrive, he says there cannot be enough patience to go around.
Detroit’s draft campus had to close for a portion of the 2024 NFL Draft, but Allen says Green Bay will be able to take on even more fans with a larger draft campus compared to Detroit’s downtown location.
“It’s really watching for the density of the crowd, the crowd movement,” Allen said. “Two hundred fifty thousand over the three days is 83,000 a day, which is very similar to the size of the crowds we see for Packers games. Because the space is so much bigger, and the staffing that we put out there, we can certainly handle more than that, without a doubt.”
Allen says there will be crowd control professionals on hand during the draft.
“There are, believe it or not, density professionals out there that will watch that, and it’s more than counting the individuals, it’s more about the space that groups of people take up,” he said.
While he does not anticipate it, Allen says there is still a very real possibility the draft campus would close if there is such a large crowd that it even fills Lambeau Field.
“If that happens there may be temporary closures of the gates while we get that organized and get people going in the right direction,” Allen said. “If that becomes overcrowded then absolutely we’ll close the gates down.”
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Allen looks forward to being on the fan side of Green Bay’s next big event when he retires. For that, he thinks the sky is the limit as the city is prepared for a successful NFL Draft.
“I think there’s a lot out there that we can certainly tackle for events in our area,” he said. “We know there will be good outcomes with this event too. But I think we kind of wait and see for a little bit and catch our breath after this one.”
