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Public safety chiefs tell Boston council they are staffing and planning for a large summer of events
Summary
Boston emergency responders told a City Council committee they have scaled staffing, mutual-aid agreements and intelligence-sharing plans for overlapping 2026 events, while councilors pressed for clarity on costs, private security oversight and interagency information-sharing.
Chair Henry Santana convened the Boston City Council Committee on Public Safety and Criminal Justice on March 26 to review city preparations for multiple large events in 2026, including FIFA matches, Tall Ships and the citys 250th anniversary. Councilors sought details on staffing, cost-sharing and how the city will protect both residents and visitors.
The hearings lead sponsor, Councilor John Fitzgerald, said the goal was to reassure families that public-safety agencies are prepared. "We're not giving away the answers to the test here," Fitzgerald added, while thanking police, fire and EMS for planning work. That theme framed most exchanges: officials described broad strategies but withheld operational specifics for security reasons.
James Hooley, chief of Boston EMS, told the committee Boston EMS fields about 440 EMTs and paramedics who responded to roughly 141,000 clinical incidents in 2025 and transported more than 95,500 patients. He said the department has a special-operations division that covered nearly 1,000 events last year and that planners treat large special events like planned mass-casualty incidents, emphasizing surge staffing, regional hospital distribution and…
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