Good morning, everyone.

I'm Amy Peck, Chair of the Public Safety Committee, and I am calling this meeting to order.

This is our joint public safety and government operations committee meeting.

Um government operations is chaired by Councilmember Flickinger, who is here with us and will take over for the second part of our meeting today.

We are also joined by um Council members Carter and Councilmember Alcorn and staff from the offices of Councilmember Castillo, Martinez, Mayor Pro Tem Cassex Tatum, Thomas Huffman, Vice Chair Jackson's office.

Did I get everybody?

I think so.

All right.

Um, first presentation will be a safety and security overview for FIFA World Cup 2026 by Assistant Chief Howard if you want to come up.

And this is going to be a high level, you know, look at what we're doing safety wise.

If they're we're happy to take questions afterwards if there's something specific, though, we can always arrange um for one-on-one meetings as well.

Thanks, Assistant Chief.

Thank you for having me here today to brief out some highlights of the Houston Police Department's FIFA World Cup 2026 planning efforts to prepare Houston for its role in this historic event.

I'd like to briefly acknowledge here in the room with me today.

We have Executive Assistant Chief Jessica Anderson as well as Captain Reese Hardy, who are instrumental in the plans.

There's also a very large team that is doing all the behind the scenes work planning and doing the day-to-day work.

So I want to thank all of them for their both for their presence and those who are not here for the work that they've done thus far.

This is a reflection of their work.

Next slide, please.

I'm sorry, this appears to be out of order.

Thank you.

That's the next slide.

Thank you.

Houston has hosted many major events over the past decade to include the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, college football playoffs, and multiple Major League Baseball World Series games, including two victory parades.

This slide is intended to highlight the sheer scale of the World Cup.

As you can see, the average World Cup match is viewed by more than 10 times the viewership of many of these other major events.

The average match even outpaces Super Bowl viewer viewership by a wide margin.

As the tournament moves into its playoff bracket, also known as the knockout rounds, the audience only grows to numbers that are pretty incredible, with one and a half billion with a B people watching the 2022 World Cup final.

Next slide.

Ronaldo has over a billion followers on social media, and his fans bring remarkable enthusiasm.

And we will host Portugal not once but twice.

We are guaranteed to host four matches at a minimum with top ten teams and dynamic players and fans.

The knockout round matches will surely be exciting for even the most casual soccer fans.

Next slide.

With that basic understanding of the tournament as a whole, I'll move into an overview of the police department's safety and security planning.

I appreciate the consideration as mentioned earlier.

This is meant to be a high-level presentation.

A number of details are law enforcement sensitive.

Um, and so this might not be the form to answer some detailed questions, but I'll do the best that I can at the end.

Next slide.

This slide represents the organizational structure to show the diverse areas of planning.

Looking at the bottom row, you can see designated leads for the major areas of planning, which are broken down by discipline and major functions.

The law enforcement and public safety planning falls under me.

Transportation, fire and medical, private security, and emergency operations center coordination are the other major areas of planning with leadership provided by HFD, OEM, TranSTAR, the Host Committee, and the Chief Medical Officer for the Houston FIFA operations.

We have crosstalk between groups within each discipline as well as across various disciplines.

There are multiple work groups assigned to each of us as we have as we have to carve up the work.

It's truly a monumental task planning for this event.

For each of the work groups under the law enforcement and public safety sections, I'm also proud to share that we have co-leads from regional partner agencies, and we have taken a multidisciplinary approach to command control, communications, and coordination.

Above the five major planning leads that you see at the bottom of the org chart, there is a structure that serves to guide our efforts as needed.

The Houston Host Committee provides the connection between local planning efforts and FIFA.

The Houston Leadership Committee has diverse representation from multiple agencies and disciplines in the region.

It assists with answering major questions that cannot be answered within the confines of each major area of planning.

And the Houston Executive Committee provides senior leadership and is the final arbiter of those decisions when we need some tiebreaker decision making.

Next slide.

This slide shows just a partial snapshot of the partners who have a role in our FIFA FIFA FIFA World Cup planning.

I do I do not have time to name all of our partner agencies, and I apologize in advance for not doing so.

On the law enforcement side, our local partners include the Harris County Sheriff's Office, the Metro Police Department, Department of Public Safety, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, and many others.

OEM, T Dem, and SetraC will provide essential regional visibility and coordination.

As a SEER 2 event, we will also have substantial support from multiple federal agencies.

A federal coordinating team has been designated to connect our planning work groups to the appropriate resources.