What is the administration of the new football stadium going to do to address the thuggish street-gang behavior displayed to others by the Raider faithful? I would love to come to town and see my home team play in Vegas. But after watching their behavior at a meaningless preseason away game last weekend in L.A., I do not feel safe. This is supposed to be fun, but soccer hooliganism is not what I want to pay large dollars for.
Excellent question and funny you should ask. Others are asking the same exact thing — and have been since the Raiders move to Las Vegas was approved. The Raiders Nation fan base is well-known for caring less about winning football games than for having its way with opposing fans.
After the Rams game, Las Vegas Locally, a Twitter and Facebook account, passed on a report in a tweet from an unnamed source within local law enforcement that the Las Vegas Stadium would have a jail cell and a small courtroom to deal onsite with unruly Raiders fans. The tweet was picked up by a number of media outlets and we received several questions similar to yours about this.
The idea certainly isn’t unprecedented; Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia actually did have a small jail and a makeshift courtroom in the bowels under the stands to deal with the worst of Philadelphia’s sports fans. Known as "Eagles Court," the whole thing went away in 2003 when Lincoln Financial Field replaced Veterans Stadium.
However, Thomas Baker, a reporter for Forbes, contacted the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which denied the report. “There will NOT be a jail or a courthouse at the Las Vegas Raiders Stadium," Baker quoted the Authority. "The stadium will have a processing room for law-enforcement officials to use, and anyone apprehended will be immediately transported offsite to appropriate detention facilities.”
After the events of last October 1, we strongly suspect that security at Raiders’ home games will be heightened way beyond normal. And though we believe that a few rotten apples can spoil the barrel and that anything can happen when tens of thousands of passionate supporters on either side of a contact-sport contest gather to watch their teams compete, the vast majority of football games are orderly and safe and fans are civilized.
Call us incurable optimists, but we’re looking forward to attending Raiders’ home games at the new arena starting in 2020.
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Luis
Sep-13-2018
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