WORCESTER, Mass. - Preparations continue for Sunday's Worcester County St. Patrick's Parade. While participants will spend the next few days getting their floats ready, the Worcester Police Department is gearing up for a busy day themselves. The department will be watching every move to keep people safe tanks in part to their Real Time Crime Center.

"Some of our command staff will be in that room monitoring," said Lt. Sean Murtha. "We have several cameras across the parade route. We also have officers with body cameras that are going to be out there. You can live stream their cameras in addition to get some more angles. It is a nice help to have that. There's also the emergency communications center. They're going to be staffed by dispatchers, fire personnel, coordinating with other agencies there too."

It's an event months in the making for both parade organizers and police, who will monitor the thousands lining Park Ave. The crime center accesses cameras already in place on properties along the route.

When it comes to events of this magnitude, Murtha says they're few and far between in Worcester, with StART on the Street being a similar operation.

"We have a lot of extra officers on the street for this including, we have K9s, we have plain clothes officers like you said, we have license division making sure that people aren't drinking underage, and that there's not people selling things they're not supposed to be selling," said Murtha.

St. Patrick's Day is one of those holidays often tied to drinking.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reporting in 2022, the rate of drunk passenger car drivers and motorcyclists involved in deadly crashes during the St. Patrick’s day holiday were 34% and 41%, respectively. Young drivers aged 21 to 34 made up more than a third of the drivers in those deadly incidents.

Murtha says it's an issue at the forefront of the department's mind heading into parade day.

"With the extra drinking comes problems of course," he said. "We have fights sometimes; we have potential drinking and driving. A lot of things for officers to deal with."