Copyright 2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
November 23, 2005, Wednesday,
FIRST EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 11C
Violence at games means trouble for
all;
School districts, fans suffer consequences
Jodi Upton
A spike in violent incidents at and around
high school football games this season runs
counter to a general trend of
safer
schools.
Federal figures released this week show
schools are
safer
than a decade ago -- the violent crime rate
in 2003 was about half of that in 1992. But
this football season, evidence of a rise in
problems at and around games was visible as
early as August, says Ken Trump, the
president of National
School Safety
and Security
Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm.
"When I looked at the incidents this year,
it jumped right out," Trump says.
With 31 football-related incidents this year
compared with 21 last year, according to
research by USA TODAY and Trump's firm,
school officials nationally are seeking ways
to combat problems.
Among the incidents:
| |
Incidents |
Deaths |
Injuries |
| 2003 |
9 |
2 |
7 |
| 2004 |
21 |
1 |
22 |
| 2005 |
31 |
4 |
33 |
*One teenager was killed and nine were
wounded in a series of fights in suburban
Dallas after three separate football games
between long-standing rivals. In at least
one of the Oct. 7 fights, police said as
many as 50 people were involved when someone
began shooting.
*In the Richmond, Va., area, multiple fights
broke out after two separate football games,
Sept. 16 and Oct. 15, leaving three officers
injured and nearly a dozen people arrested.
*In the Nashville area, four men were
arrested Oct. 28 after unannounced use of a
metal detector at the stadium gates led to
the discovery of guns the men apparently
planned to take into the game.
Trump and other security experts say there
is no one cause for this fall's rise in
stadium violence, saying it's a combination
of understaffing and opportunity.
Football stadiums present a perfect
opportunity to settle a score: a distracted
crowd, an overwhelmed, and often
undertrained, security staff and access to
rivals not available during school hours,
the security experts say.
When an incident occurs, school response to
the problem varies. Some administrators fall
somewhere between denial and bargaining: It
was a one-time occurrence; it was
non-students causing problems; it was across
the street from the stadium.
"Everyone is so afraid of having a school
tagged as dangerous. I tell them to take
ownership," says Curt Lavarello, executive
director of the
School Safety
Advocacy Council, a group of police,
sheriffs and school superintendents. "The
longer you point fingers, the longer we'll
not resolve this problem."
Others have adopted a more extreme stance:
At some high-profile games, police patrol
with semiautomatic weapons, Trump says.
In Palm Beach County, Fla., for one
potentially troublesome game, police have
patrolled with as many as 30 officers, a
helicopter unit and mounted police, says Jim
Kelly, Palm Beach County School District
police chief.
In the Wayne Township (Ind.) School
District, in the Indianapolis area, a
high-profile game this season attended by
about 10,000 -- three times the typical
crowd for a game in that district -- was
staffed with 30 officers, including
undercover, gang and probation officers,
says Chuck Hibbert, the school district's
security coordinator.
Security is expensive, and fully staffing
all games would tax local police
departments, Dallas County Commissioner John
Wiley Price says. He favors Saturday games.
"How many people have to get killed or
maimed before we get some sort of reaction?"
he says.
Others say police presence in schools helps
make sporting events safer. Nashville area
police arrested the four gun-toting men,
ages 18-23, near a stadium gate after police
at Whites Creek High School learned there
might be guns at the game; they urged
supervisors to bring in more officers and
sweep spectators for weapons.
"The officers had their ears to the ground
and heard some rumblings that some guns
might show up at the game," Metropolitan
Nashville Police Department spokesman Don
Aaron says. Use of the metal detector "put
the community on notice that we can do these
unannounced gate checks fairly quickly."
Elsewhere, schools in many cities hire an
off-duty officer or two, but to keep costs
down, many schools have teacher and parent
volunteers to watch crowds of thousands.
That's just not enough, Trump and others
say. But because security is typically paid
out of the athletic budget, more cops may
mean no new helmets or uniforms.
Other changes, such as moving games to
Saturdays or starting early on Fridays, are
also costly -- and unpopular.
"It cuts into my profits," says Bruce
Lawton, athletics director at Old Mill High
School in Maryland's Anne Arundel County,
near Washington and Baltimore. There, the
school board paid for extra security at all
games after an accidental shooting Oct. 28
at an Old Mill road game, and two deaths in
nearby Montgomery County, Md. The board also
moved the games in the season's last two
weeks to 5:15, two hours earlier than
scheduled.
"It's (hurting) us in ticket sales," Lawton
says. "It also has an effect on our
community: People can't get out of work
early enough to get to games."
Many parents have told the board they oppose
the change for 2006, county athletics
program supervisor Marlene Kelly says.
Meanwhile, schools are preparing for
basketball and applying lessons learned from
football season. During football season, a
series of postgame fights -- including one
injury -- prompted school officials in
Chesterfield County, Va., near Richmond, to
sell only advance tickets for most games,
limit attendance to seating capacity and
make school officials easy to identify.
Says C.W. Fletcher, principal at the
county's Meadowbrook High School, "The same
policies will be enforced for basketball."
Contributing: Greg
Toppo, Sal Ruibal, Tom Weir.
Sources for violent
incidents: USA TODAY research; National
School Safety and Security Services
---------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright
2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
November 23, 2005, Wednesday,
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 1C
Violence visits high school football;
Deaths, injuries yield protective measures
Jodi Upton
Violent incidents -- as well as injuries and
deaths -- at high school football games have
been steadily increasing over the last three
seasons, according to research by USA TODAY
and a national security firm.
With incidents this year ranging from
accidentally dropped guns to fights that
cleared stands to scores settled in the
deadliest way under Friday night lights,
school boards nationally "are obviously
talking about this issue," says Reggie
Felton, director of federal relations for
the National School Boards Association.
In all, there have been 31 incidents in 18
states, with 33 people injured and four
deaths during the 2005 season. Some
incidents occurred within the stands, others
outside the gates. Sometimes the fights
involved students or people with a school
connection; other times the fights involved
outsiders.
In any case, the tradition of Friday night
football has lost its innocence in many
parts of the country, says Ken Trump, the
president of National
School Safety
and Security
Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm.
Some schools have opted for Saturday games
or experimented with earlier games --
anathema in communities where high school
football is part of the DNA.
"Saying we're never going to play on Friday
night again? Absolutely not," Duncanville
(Texas) football coach Dan Schreiber says.
There, a recent postgame shooting injured
three teenagers in the Dallas suburb.
Friday night games are "a huge experience
for the kids," Schreiber says. "It's what
they grow up dreaming about."
Contributing: Greg Toppo
