Woodward Dream Cruise Readies for Thousands of Visitors

It's all talk on a Friday morning. I'm Kevin Deeds coming to you from the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building. The number is 1-800-8-5-9-57-1-800-8-5-0-WJR. Give us a call. Give us a text. Be a part of the show. More than a million people. Thousands of thousands of thousands of classic cars. One of the biggest events anywhere. The Woodward Dream Cruise is back this weekend. For most of us, it's about Mustangs, Corvettes, GTOs, Hot Rods. Maybe sitting in lawn chairs, people watching, spending an hour trying to move three blocks on Woodward. But imagine being responsible for keeping everybody safe when that many people and that many cars descend on one stretch of road. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and his deputies will be right in the middle of it all. He joins us now. Good morning. How are you? Gov, how are you? I'm doing great. Appreciate you being here. You're on the, on team, love the Dream Cruise, right? We've been having a debate all day whether people love or hate the Dream Cruise. Yeah, no, I am because I'm an automotive guy. My dad was, you know, career automotive world, you know, 33 years with Chevrolet. You know, it's just... It's just pure, not just Michigan, but pure America. You know, you've got muscle cars out there. You get the people that built those cars from the line all the way to the road. You know, it just, it just embodies the grit of our community. I know it's, you know, I mean, it's more headaches for us than it really is for anybody else because we worry ourselves sick, trying to get ready and prepare. imagine any terrible eventuality could happen how we get in front of it, all that kind of stuff. And for everybody else, it's traffic and it's a nightmare for some of the businesses. I get all that. But it's so unique to our area and our state. So I fall on the positive side, even though all of those downsides, you know, for some are a challenge. Yeah. Do you have a favorite car that you own? Do you have a car that stands out to you? Yeah, I, you know, obviously, because my dad was a Chevy guy, I kind of grew up in the Chevy brand. So my first car was a Camero, a used Camero that I... tinkered with and loved. And, you know, then probably my favorite car in that lineup at the time when I was a kid. And I have actually an old one now is a Corvette. So, but I do love a lot of, a lot of the cars, you know, the old Mustangs, the old, some of the Thunderbirds, you know, some of the muscle cars, the Chevels and the goats. you know i i just enjoy the whole thing yeah i know i know you're constantly watching the crowd and not even seeing any of the cars while you're out there but uh yeah i i don't know do you ever see a car out there you say man i would love i'd love to get that car yeah again i because you know my dad and i were so kind of connected together as as

that bond that father and son has around cars, Corvettes are kind of my soft spot. So, you know, I'll see a 56, 57, 58 Corvette going down the road or 63, you know, the split window or or the 68, 69, you know, with Fuley. So. Yeah, something in the Corvette lineup. You can't go wrong with the Corvette family. Oh, man, that's me. Yeah, you can't go wrong with the Corvette family. It's just fabulous. So many, so many great cars. All right, so you got these huge crowds. I mentioned there's all kinds of things that you have to be aware of. What are the bigger public safety concerns going into the weekend? Well, you know, we've got a great partnership. All of the chiefs up and down woodward, 13-mile stretch. You know, we work hand and glove. We're each other's friends. They have a problem. It's my problem. I have a problem. It's their problem. And that's the way we work. And we've got, you know, such a template now. People come in from all over the world to watch how we handle this event because it's so unique. When you have an event like a Super Bowl or something, you close all the streets. And that immeasurably enhances the ease of security. because a lot of the security concerns revolve around vehicles, right? But this event is vehicles. So obviously that raises a whole different specter of what we need to think about, be concerned about it. And on that point, I want to remind people that there is a restriction in place all day. tomorrow that you cannot have a vehicle over 10,000 pounds, you know, like any kind of truck that's over 10,000 pounds or any kind of vehicle, commercial vehicle, things like that, or anything pulling a trailer. No trailers are allowed on one word. So that is a traffic order that's in place, the whole stretch. And the other thing we encourage people to do is if you don't have a classic car, Watch from the side of the road. You know, a lot of that traffic that's out there, you know, you have people out there and minivans and, you know, all sorts of vehicles that have nothing to do with the purpose of it, which is to cruise classic cars out there for the public to enjoy and see some of which they may never get to see. So we encourage people to, you know, watch it from the side rather than just, you know, add to the congestion if they're driving a car that really is. their everyday transportation, but nothing to do with the kind of views that people want to get. And that makes the whole thing a little less congested and move a bit more. And it gives you more access to the views and people take pictures, things like that. Do they just have like a tow truck? On the security, I kind of buried the lead there. On the security concerns, what we try to figure out. What kind of threat may evidence itself? How do we think about it? How do we prevent it if we can't prevent it? How we mitigate it? So there will be a ton of resources staged up and down in the area. Some of what you will see, some of which you will not in case we have anything. You know, we hope and pray nothing ever happens, but we're taking preparations. That's the strategy rather than hope and prayer.

preparation is always our strategy. You guys going to have drones up? We're going to have everything up. Our helicopters will be up. We'll have our drones up. And we'll also have our counter drone team. People have to realize they cannot fly drones over crowds or over the trafficked area. And a lot of people do that. We had a lot of incursions. Anybody that has a drone needs to go Google tonight, wherever they're allowed to fly and what they're allowed to do. We've had people break the law. pretty significantly and in very unsafe manner. We've had drones go up as high as 1,300 feet. By law, they have to be under 400 feet, as an example. So they were flying in our crude aircraft space, which is a super dangerous, you know, thing to do. So we're going to have our counter drone team out there as well, and they'll be, you know, tracking down people that are flying illegally and causing these unsafe things. You also have a lot of deputies up on horses. Is there an advantage to being up high with these big crowds? Yeah, they can get places quickly that, you know, obviously with the congestion and traffic, you can't get up and down when we're very quickly unless you're on a horse, running the median on a motorcycle or an ATV. And so we'll have a tremendous amount of those assets out there. So if an emergency happens or we have to respond to something, we can move up and down quickly, even though there's gridlock on the actual road. And then secondarily, you know, I think the crowd gets it. You know, it's a family event, and we don't have tolerance for, you know, dangerous driving behavior, any alcohol driving behavior, or any kind of, you know, violent activity. And so many years ago, we had some people get out of hand and start throwing bottles, wouldn't leave, and things like that. we moved our horses in and some other assets and made some arrests. And we, thankfully, I think the message was sent that was like 20 years ago. So we don't anticipate that, but the horses are a tool that can respond to an emergency or to folks that just, you know, are trying to wreck the event. I know that you guys train for all of the horrible, terrible things that we hope never happen. But also there's the simple things. Like parents could get separated from their kids. You guys have to be ready for almost anything that could happen.

100%. And there will be posts up and down the whole stretch that will be staffed by police in the median. So if any kind of emergency happens or a lost child or whatever the situation is, there'll be assets and resources there that will quickly be able to help you and respond. That's awesome. Mike Bouchard, Oakland County Sheriff, have a fabulous weekend at the Dream Cruise. You too. Have a great one, my friend. All right. We'll talk again real soon. It's going to be amazing. Embrace it, enjoy it. Don't complain about it. And be safe out there. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. It's all talk. I'm Kevin Deetz.