SEATTLE — From law enforcement partnerships and transportation habits to arts and culture projects around the city as the World Cup ends, organizations in Seattle are exploring how to make the legacy of the last month into a lasting future.
Leo Flor, the chief legacy officer of Seattle’s organizing committee, says it started with making the matches secondary to the experience outside of the stadium.
“The soccer is really just the vehicle to something much bigger," Flor said. “Even though the whole world was coming here to visit us, what we really wanted to do was to show off who we are, show off our culture, show off the people that make this community extraordinary.”
The events, like the work, started before the games.
The Puyallup Tribe held FIFA’s first land acknowledgment before a match. The “Vital Spirit” statue in front of Lumen Field was installed for the matches but will be there for good, connecting Seattle’s three sports venues that all now have sculptures by Gerald Tsutakawa to welcome fans.
Flags and banners spread throughout the city’s public spaces. Those were accompanied by the now-iconic Sea Beacon of a neon whale tale accentuated with the roof of Lumen Field on top.
“We’re finding that symbol is more of a symbol of pride about where we’re from than anything else, and that’s the timeless nature of what we were going for,” said Peter Tomozawa, the CEO of Seattle’s FIFA organizing committee.
“I think what we left and what we found was that Seattleites, Washingtonians rediscovered pride for the community that we live in,” Tomozawa said.
Tomozawa says, in addition to the arts and cultural aspects, he has pointed out and confirmed by SPD and other law enforcement agencies that there were no major public safety incidents during the game.
Millions of dollars of grants for local, state and federal law enforcement to staff up for the games.
On Tuesday, the FBI, SPD, KCSO, DEA, ATF and King County Prosecutors announced that 17 of what they describe as the “most violent criminals” during the games in an operation they called “Operation Red Card.”
Mike Harrington with the FBI Seattle office says intelligence sharing at the Washington State Fusion Center was a key piece of the operation.
"That was one of many coordination centers passing information, intelligence awareness nationwide to make sure that we were seeing any potential threat as early as possible and able to get out in front and disrupt it."
Eighty percent of the 17 arrested were charged with gun charges, as the ATF said. They will run the guns into their database to find out if they were used in any crimes.
Harrington said the grants helped create the level of collaboration and set it up to continue.
“Those were investments in building the capability, building the capacity, building this kind of partnership and collaboration that we want to continue to carry on to the future.”
Tomozawa says his biggest surprise, after years of planning, was how much people said they needed an event of this magnitude to rediscover Seattle and feel pride in the region.
Of all the people he met, a 14-year-old boy left the biggest impression on him. The teen was one of 1,400 kids to get tickets to the game, but his focus was on something bigger.
“I thought he was going to talk about, oh, I was so excited about seeing Mohammed Salah, one of the best players in the world in soccer. He said, ‘I have never seen so many people so happy.’” Tomazawa said. “That’s what that boy is going to remember 20 years from now, and if that’s what he remembers, we’ve done our job.”