KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Thousands of fans will soon converge on the metro for the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, and Kansas City Missouri Police say that they are making sure that they have a strong plan in place to handle the extra traffic – and part of that plan involves some help from the Missouri Highway Patrol.
KCPD officers are using this weekend’s Kansas City Royals-St. Louis Cardinals series at Kauffman Stadium as training for more than two dozen state troopers on local traffic. Police say that they can use the extra help.
“We’re going to show them how we normally do it and start training them, and then tomorrow they’ll take a more active roll,” said Capt. Mike Wood of the KCPD.
Wood says that this weekend was chosen for training because of the large crowds expected for the Royals-Cardinals series. On Sunday, the troopers will be doing the traffic control on their own, just like they will during the week of the All-Star Game.
“By them taking the responsibility of this, it frees up my traffic enforcement officers so we can do all the escort, escorting the teams around and stuff,” said Capt. Wood. “Quite honestly, we couldn’t do it without their help.”
KCPD officers work 81 games a year between both Kauffman and Arrowhead Stadiums, so they say that they can let troopers know where all the major traffic trouble spots around the sports complex are located.