Dallas Gears Up For Peaceful Celebration
Police and educators are taking extra steps to prevent violence or truancy when the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys are saluted in a downtown parade Feb. 7.
The parade is to start about 30 minutes before the end of the school day - any later would have clogged evening rush-hour traffic, Robert Shaw, a Dallas business and ex-Cowboy who is heading the parade committee, said Tuesday.
About 800 officers will be assigned to parade duty, Dallas Police Chief Ben Click said.
They’ll include members of the department’s gang units to identify gang members among the spectators and keep them under surveillance to prevent a recurrence of the violence that marred the Super Bowl parade in 1993. Police on horseback will escort the players’ floats.
“It’s going to be a safe parade, an enjoyable parade,” Click said.
Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple all but promised appearances by headline players like Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith and others who are in Hawaii for Sunday’s NFL Pro Bowl.
“Our star players dearly want to get back and share the experience with their fans,” said Dalrymple, who noted most of the top players participated in the 1993 and 1994 Super Bowl parades. “It means a whole lot to them.”
The Cowboys, who defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-17 in the Super Bowl on Sunday, will be feted in the parade - “Dr Pepper Presents Dallas Salutes the Boys” - with marching bands and a float carrying the Super Bowl trophy.
The team will ride a downtown course south of Reunion Arena to Young Street and then to the front of City Hall, which has been renamed “Cowboys Plaza” for the event.
Shaw said he hopes participation will number somewhere between the 200,000-strong crowd of 1993, which was marked by violence, injuries and arrests, and the disappointing 60,000 spectators of 1994.
The Dallas school district is considering allowing students to watch the parade on televisions in class so they won’t leave early. The parade begins at 2:30 p.m.One Dallas woman said she would take her two sons, ages 9 and 6, out of school for the event because the family couldn’t go to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Monday for the return of the team’s charter flight.”I think this is just my way of making it up to them,” said Mary Sands. “My kids just idolize them.”
The city will pay $100,000 toward the cost of this year’s parade and corporate sponsors have contributed $255,000.
The excess above the original $271,000 projected tab will not be dedicated to reducing the city’s share - a point criticized by City Councilman Paul Fielding.
Instead, Shaw said, it will go first toward extras like decorative floats, banners, balloons and free pompons for fans along the parade route.