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SALT LAKE CITY — While many Salt Lake Comic Con attendees will be spending Saturday dressed as crime-fighting superheroes, police officers will be focusing on keeping downtown streets safe during a busy weekend.
Salt Lake Comic Con, the LDS women's conference and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Circus XTREME are expected to attract droves of visitors to downtown Saturday, police say.
"It's always an unpredictable thing how traffic will be affected," said Salt Lake Police Lt. John Beener. "Patience is always a good thing, (as is) planning ahead and leaving early."
Beener said it's likely most congested traffic will die out by 10 p.m. He also asked residents to recognize that many motorists in the area won't be familiar with Salt Lake's roads.
"They're tourists, and they don't know what road takes them where sometimes," he said, "so it's good to try to keep that in mind and be a little more patient."
False alarms also are frequently called in during comic con events because a lot of people participating in cosplay carry fake weapons, Beener said.
"Sometimes people confuse that as a threat," he said. "But obviously that's not the case."
Beener called Salt Lake Comic Con "typically a friendly, law-abiding type crowd," meaning officers don't need to be out in "massive force."
Fifteen to 20 officers typically monitor an events the size LDS general conference, Beener said, but he didn't have an estimate for Saturday's three events combined.
