Safety no game for police
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008
The teams relied on months of planning and teamwork honed by hours of preparation to pull off a successful weekend in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s first and second rounds.
And they never shot a single free throw.
Police in North Little Rock began planning security for the event well before the season began in November and say that the preparation appears to be paying off.
“We started planning months ago,” said North Little Rock Police Chief Danny Bradley. “We allowed no officers to take off on vacation during these days to have plenty of staffing available.” At stake are millions of dollars in tourist expenditures if future tournaments are awarded to the city after a well-run and safe weekend of basketball, authorities and tourism officials said.
North Little Rock police, with fewer officers than their colleagues on the south bank of the Arkansas River, are struggling with staffing shortages. The department has 18 fewer officer positions in its budget than it did two years ago, and six officers are on military leave.
But, the department had officers to cover the teams and fans that swarmed the downtown area, and there were few problems, said North Little Rock police spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall on Friday.
“Everything has gone well, so far,” said Kuykendall, whose own assignment was one fans would envy. He escorted officials to and from the court and planned to be courtside during all six games.
Kuykendall said many officers worked inside the arena, while others were assigned to traffic duties around the downtown North Little Rock arena.
Two teams stayed at the Wyndham hotel a few blocks from the arena, while the other six teams stayed at Little Rock hotels.
Little Rock police Lt. Casey Clark, who commands the department’s Traffic Services Division, said officers were assigned to each team that stayed in Little Rock.
“We had our motorcycle officers, all our traffic safety officers assigned to the teams,” Clark said Friday. “We have pretty much 24-7 security on all the teams all the time they are in town.” Clark said his officers work closely with the hotel staffs to make sure the teams and the traveling parties are safe, for instance, from heckling fans from opposing teams.
“We’re just making sure there’s a police presence and everything is going smoothly,” Clark said.
“Everything so far has gone great,” Clark said. “I can’t think of one incident.” Clark said the department was prepared to address any traffic issues.
In addition to the duty of guarding the teams, police on both sides of the river were heavily patrolling downtown streets where fans congregate.
In North Little Rock, police set up a command post on Main Street just north of Broadway. Late Friday, while games were being played in the nearby arena, fans walking back and forth from the game to the nearby hotels mixed with dozens of police officers, some walking downtown beats and others on bicycles.
In Little Rock’s River Market District, traffic on President Clinton Boulevard was crawling Friday as fans from the games mixed with Arkansas fans watching the Razorbacks from their favorite drinking establishments.
Police reported no major incidents, despite the hundreds of patrons.
It’s important that the tournament go off without problems, organizers say, because a problem-free event could draw the tournament, and the millions of dollars that fans bring with them, back to the area. Tourism officials estimated that between 14, 000 and 30, 000 fans would shell out $ 2. 5 million to $ 4 million on hotel rooms, food, souvenirs and other purchases.
“We want everyone to have a good time, but it’s more important to us that everyone have a safe time,” said Little Rock police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings. “We’re dedicating a lot of officers to the areas with the most traffic, but we’re not losing sight of our job to protect the citizens of the city through our regular patrol duties.” In addition to the officers on the streets, several North Little Rock police officers worked inside the arena, and undercover officers kept an eye out for ticket scalpers and merchandise bootleggers, Kuykendall said.
Kuykendall said officers had made no arrests for bootlegging or scalping outside the arena. Information for this story was contributed by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
