Security Tightened For Discover Orange Bowl
MIAMI GARDENS (CBS4) - Long before thousands of screaming Stanford and Virginia Tech fans show up at Sun Life Stadium to cheer on their teams in the Discover Orange Bowl, Miami-Dade police were hard at work to make sure the game would be safe.
"His name is Bo, he's seven years old. He's from the Czech Republic and he's an explosive detection dog, as well as an apprehension dog," said Miami-Dade Lieutenant Jeff Schmidinger with the department's K-9 Unit.
The Schmidinger's German Shepard was one of 10 police dogs hard at work at the stadium early Monday making sure that everything was secure.
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"Basically he's looking for any ingredients that would be inside an explosive device," said Schmidinger.
Beginning at 8 am all delivery trucks were stopped at a checkpoint and K-9 units sniffed their shipments thoroughly for weapons or explosives. Delivery truck driver Cristian Delone made the mistake of not leaving behind his concealed weapon, a mistake which was quickly found out by the dogs.
"This is a perfect example of how this type of security check does in fact work," said Miami-Dade police spokesperson Lt. Rosana Codero-Stutz. "This individual happened to have a concealed weapons license and did identify himself. At that point we went ahead and took it from him to secure it while he does his work inside."
"It's feels good, even for myself because I'll be working there," said Delone.
In addition to checking the incoming traffic, the police dogs also did a security sweep throughout the stadium grounds including the umpire and teams locker room areas.
"They'll be going all the way until the beginning of the game as well as once the game begins, they will continue to sweep inside the parking lot as well as in the stadium," said Schmidinger.
Kick off for the big game is at 8:30 p.m. Those heading to the game are advised to leave extra time to clear the security check points set up at the stadium entrances.
