Providing a safer game-day experience for fans doesn’t begin inside the gates of sports facilities. Many security measures are aimed at curbing the problems tied to excessive drinking in the parking lots.
Parking lot violence continues to plague NFL and MLB stadiums in California. The most recent episodes occurred Nov. 10 — a stabbing and two assaults outside the main gate at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego during a Thursday night NFL game. Earlier this year, two shootings were reported in parking lots at Candlestick Park at an NFL preseason game, and in March, a San Francisco Giants fan was severely beaten in a parking lot at Dodger Stadium.
In Oakland, O.co Coliseum is one stadium in the Golden State with no reports of shootings and stabbings in its parking lots this year. It has been a work in progress after the NFL faced some “major challenges” with Raider Nation in the past over violence, harassment of the opposing team’s fans and severe intoxication, said Jeffrey Miller, an NFL vice president and the league’s chief security officer.
Three years after the NFL rolled out its Fan Code of Conduct, the league started working closely with the Raiders, stadium manager SMG, city and county law enforcement, and the building’s two security firms, to step up vigilance in the parking lots. The first thing fans see when they pull into the lots are uniformed police officers stationed with parking lot flaggers. In addition, police pair up in two-person teams on foot, bicycle and horseback, searching the lots for activities that could lead to destructive behavior inside the stadium.
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The San Francisco 49ers encourage fans to wrap up tailgating early with a promotion that randomly awards food vouchers, suite upgrades and pregame field passes.
Photo by: Getty Images |
It’s the same across the league. If police and security see a group “drinking out of a large beer bong, playing a game they probably shouldn’t be doing,” Miller said, they will inform those fans that their antics could lead to a situation that could get them in trouble during the game. The drinking game is not something the group would be arrested for, but warning against it falls in line with maintaining a sense of order from the outset, Miller said.
In all NFL markets, making a bigger push to stop binge drinking in the lots before the game ultimately reduces the number of alcohol-related issues confronting stadium operations, security and law enforcement inside the facility.
“What we learned [in Oakland] was that just having police on the perimeter around the lots does not work,” Miller said.
Across the bay in San Francisco, the 49ers have made similar adjustments at Candlestick Park after the ugly episodes at the Raiders-49ers preseason game. Team officials increased security inside the stadium and the parking lots and implemented a new rule prohibiting tailgating after kickoff. At that point, fans must enter the stadium or leave the parking lots, said 49ers spokesman Steve Weakland. Soldier Field in Chicago, home of the Bears, has the same tailgating policy.
To help push 49ers fans toward the gates, the team, in partnership with its concessionaire Centerplate, offers an “Early Fan of the Game” promotion, randomly distributing $25 vouchers for food and drink, plus suite upgrades and pregame field passes.
For the past few years, the 49ers have used the Rock Med tent, the same volunteer medical team (operated by the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic) that has nursed Bay Area concertgoers back to health since 1973. The mobile facility supports the 49ers’ first aid stations and paramedics in the stadium and the parking lots. The team believes it presents a better option to treat inebriated fans compared with crowding jails and putting a burden on San Francisco police, said Jim Mercurio, the 49ers’ vice president of stadium operations and security.
Those drinkers who remain belligerent and refuse treatment can still be locked up, Mercurio said.
