By Joe Meyer

You can walk your baby in a stroller through the traffic barriers that bound sections of State Street, when the road is closed to vehicles for big public events, like Uptown’s Fourth Friday street festivals.

But those traffic barriers would stop a truck. Literally.

Effective, yet inobtrusive. That’s the way the Westerville Division of Police likes it, and that stance could be a theme for the multiple layers of safety protection the division deploys at Fourth Fridays, and other major civic events.

Westerville Assistant Police Chief Tom Gallagher has a hand in coordinating police efforts, as well as the work of multiple city departments that goes into Westerville’s big events like the Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Fourth Friday festivals and the upcoming July 4th celebration.

“People want to come to these events and feel safe,” Gallagher said, but they don’t want to feel like they are walking into “a de-militarized zone.”

Balance is the key. The city has a huge presence at big events, but of course is principally charged with maintaining public safety services across the rest of the city at all times.

A casual observer may not notice, but along with police, employees of the city Electric Division, Parks Department, Service Department and more are at work during Westerville’s public events. Though Gallagher’s main job with Westerville police is heading its investigative services, records and court divisions, he has a background in public events planning from many years in his former employment with the Dublin Police Department.

Since arriving in Westerville more than a year ago, he’s volunteered to help coordinate the administrative tasks involved with staging public events here. He works to “make sure everyone has what they need” and acts as a liaison between the many departments involved.

There is a big public police presence at Westerville civic events, but much of it is community services outreach – School Resource Officers, DARE officers, the teen Explorers program, many supervisors. Gallagher said it’s gratifying for many of the officers to be out and about, interacting with the public and youngsters.

There are many other pieces of more serious public safety efforts that may or may not be noticed by residents attending the events. In May, police began deploying a new high-tech observation tower, south of the former police headquarters building at 29 S. State St.

The 30-foot “Skywatch Tower” is an aerial surveillance platform that’s loaned to the city at no cost from the Ohio Department of Public Safety. The tower can accommodate officers and also is equipped with multiple live-feed and recording video systems.

It can aid in everything from locating a lost child to identifying people involved in a crime.

Then there are the drones. The city Police and Fire Divisions jointly operate remote-controlled aerial drones, and they seem always to be deployed overhead during public events.

“You’re going to find almost every agency” uses drone technology now, Gallagher said, and the city’s long-range system has proved very beneficial for safety services.

“A true ‘eye in the sky,’ as cliché as that sounds, is very beneficial to us,” he said. The drones can rapidly move to areas of concern, and even help direct first responders to someone having a health crisis in the middle of a crowd.

Back to the traffic barriers: The high-tech Meridian barriers – on loan from the Licking County Sherrif’s Office – are built to prevent the vehicle-based attacks on public events that, sadly, have been in other parts of the U.S., and particularly in Europe.

They can stop a huge vehicle within a few feet, but appear totally innocuous to that young parent pushing a stroller. They actually are more effective than the big Service Department trucks Westerville used to place at the State Street boundaries to Uptown, blocking vehicle traffic as pedestrians take over the roadway during Fourth Fridays.

“They are a barrier, but maybe people don’t see it as such,” Gallagher said.

Like the drones, the observation tower and the increased police staffing. They are there, hopefully very effective at need, yet not some sort of jarring interruption to the civic celebrations they serve to protect.

Photo captions:

ABOVE: The City of Westerville uses Meridian street barriers, as shown in this photo from the 2024 Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif., when closing streets to vehicular traffic for public events. (The barriers Westerville borrows from the Licking County Sheriff’s office are yellow, not white as shown here.)

BELOW: Westerville police also have begun deploying a 30-foot “Skywatch Tower” such as this at public events, including Fourth Fridays — an aerial surveillance platform that’s loaned to the city at no cost from the Ohio Department of Public Safety.