New Year's Eve security in Copacabana will have 30 surveillance towers

With an expected audience of two million people, after two years suspended because of the covid-19 pandemic, the Copacabana New Year's Eve party in Rio de Janeiro will have a new security scheme, with surveillance towers on the sand and a search of people who will follow the shows and the fireworks display on the beachfront of the neighborhood in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro on the night of the 31st.

The New Year's Eve party will have two stages and 20 sound towers in Copacabana, with a 12-minute firework display. On the main stage, in front of the Copacabana Palace hotel, the attractions will be the singers Zeca Pag

The State Department of Military Police of Rio de Janeiro informed that the reinforcement in policing in Copacabana will start at 2 pm on Saturday and will be used means such as mobile grids and aerial images to control the flow of the public.

Cars

The access of passenger cars to the neighborhood will be forbidden from 7:30 pm and buses and cabs will be allowed to circulate until 10 pm. To take the subway, it is necessary to buy special tickets in advance.

There will be 29 blocking points, 13 of them for traffic interdiction and 16 for pedestrian searches, with 15 police officers with metal detectors in each one. The objective is to prevent people with firearms, white weapons and perforating objects from having access to the shore.

Monitoring towers

Another novelty is the installation of 30 observation towers with a light cannon, 1.20 meters high and 10 square meters of internal area. There will be 15 structures on the sidewalk and 15 on the sand strip, near the water.

Five tents will also be installed on the sand strip, with capacity for up to ten policemen, eight cabins for four policemen, and 64 base points with vehicles all along the Avenida Atlântica and on internal streets in the neighborhood.

The real time location of the policemen is done by means of a GPS (Global Positioning System) coupled to the portable cameras, which have the images transmitted to the 19th BPM's operations room and to the corporation's Integrated Command and Control Center. The monitoring will also receive in real time the images captured by the city hall cameras.

Last New Year's Eve, the Public Safety Institute (ISP) indicated a 25% drop in street robberies, compared to the previous year, even with the cancellation of the parties because of the pandemic.