Pennsylvania State Police landed a helicopter at Point State Park on Tuesday morning as part of preparations for the 2026 NFL Draft. 

The landing surprised a lot of people, but troopers in a press release said the pre-draft exercise was a "crucial step for public safety planning, location layout familiarization, and communication testing." 

There are only about 100 days to go until hundreds of thousands of people descend on Pittsburgh for the NFL draft. Pittsburghers can expect more planning like this, not just from state police, but from multiple agencies. 

"All agencies are doing their own training, preparing for what threats that they've identified. So we've been planning for this for about eight or nine months now," said Darryl Jones, the chief of Pittsburgh's emergency management office.

The draft event will span over three days. And it won't just be in Downtown Pittsburgh and the North Shore. It will be all over southwestern Pennsylvania, as there's a good chance lodging will affect most nearby areas. 

Residents are happy that preparedness training is already underway. 

"It's always important to have good security. You never know what could happen. I think it's always better to be safer than sorry," said Zach Kautter.

"It's an exposed stadium and we have a lot of hills here, so I'd imagine that there's a lot of security risks to begin with, especially when you have so many people coming from out of state bringing their cars and their belongings, you never know what could be going on in someone's home or car," said Lila English. 

While Tuesday's training exercise was certainly visible to many, other trainings, plannings and multi-level activities are going on in places you cannot see. 

"Some of the trainings that you're seeing now is some of the fruits of all of the preparation or part of the preparation that has already gone into this, and there will be future trainings," Jones said.