The Chicago Police Department plans to flood a Sunday marathon with undercover cops as an additional safety measure in light of the Las Vegas shooting.
The department will add 1,000 uniformed officers to the already-scheduled undercover police officers that will guard the Chicago Marathon, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
“CPD will have heavy undercover presence at this #ChicagoMarathon Well over 1,000 additional officers have been added to our deployment,” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guigliemi said.
Chicago Police Chief Anthony Riccio of the Bureau of Organized Crime said during a Thursday press conference that the department had learned from the Las Vegas tragedy and would be adjusting the number of undercover cops in the area accordingly.
“They’re going to be intermingled with the crowd, they’re going to be around the runners, they’re going to be in the finish line, they’re going to be in the start line,” he said. “So we’re going to have a significant amount of undercover officers that are going to be blending in there to keep an eye on things.”
The move comes after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Stephen Paddock, the 64-year-old gunman who fired into a crowd of Las Vegas concertgoers Sunday, had booked a room in a Chicago hotel. The organization behind the marathon has promised to work with police to ensure that participants are kept safe.
“And, on race day, we will be working alongside the Chicago Police Department and many others in the law enforcement community, as we do every year, to keep our event, our participants and our city safe,” Carey Pinkowski, the executive race director, said in a statement. “We remind everyone on race day to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement immediately.”
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