Holding cells for drunks are called the ‘nicest’ in San Diego
By Kelly Thornton, The San Diego Union-Tribune
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Of all the firsts at Petco Field, home of the San Diego Padres, it’s likely nobody aspired to be the first prisoner in the ballpark’s slammer, which police have described as “the nicest holding cells in San Diego.”
At the recent four-day college tournament, Petco’s inaugural baseball games, 12 drunks were tossed into three concrete cells in the bowels of the park. The three cells have shiny stainless-steel benches and steel doors with large windows. The common area has family restrooms, a nice blue linoleum floor and a couple of offices for prisoner processing. The main door said “Guest Services.”
At Qualcomm, the detainees would have been jailed in a chain-link cage.
“We actually inaugurated the cells before the beginning of the first game with a drunk-in-public arrest,” said San Diego police Sgt. Toby Freestone, who leads the department’s security team at Petco. “I went out of my way to go down there and point out to him he was the lucky No. 1, and he was less than impressed. Maybe down the road he’ll remember, and it will give him something to tell the grandkids.”
The relatively luxurious cells are part of an elaborate security plan that boasts a video surveillance system of 62 cameras, two security command centers, a fire command center and three medical facilities staffed by a doctor, nurses and emergency medical technicians.
“It’s a really great facility in terms of security,” said Richard Andersen, Padres executive vice president and managing director of Petco Park. “It’s state of the art. Our No. 1 value here is safety.”
The security force at Petco, which seats 42,000 people, is almost double that of Qualcomm, which can seat 66,154 for baseball games. In addition, special teams will concentrate on alcohol-related problems. Officials won’t say how many security workers that amounts to for a typical game.
Officials from the San Diego Police Department, the city’s Homeland Security department, the U.S. Secret Service and other agencies spent eight months creating a disaster plan for any scenario – from bomb scares to earthquakes to suspicious packages to terrorist attacks.
They recently held three sessions for drills and role-playing, and for determining who would take charge, and who would be responsible for various tasks.
Mindful of the bombings of trains in Madrid on the day the first game was played at Petco, officials have noted in their plans that the downtown ballpark is at the hub of the regional transportation system, near the San Diego Trolley and train tracks, and near the 10th Avenue fuel terminal.
“I believe we have a reasonable plan,” said D.P. Lee, the city’s homeland security director. “The challenge was making the plans and guidelines.”
An eye on you
One of the park’s command centers is beneath the stands where employees of Elite Show Services Inc. watch over the facility 24 hours a day. There are multiple video screens for scanning the hallways, seating areas and gates inside Petco, as well as for panning, tilting and zooming up to two blocks outside of the park.
On game days, the command center moves inside the “batter’s eye,” the darkened area in center field that is meant to help hitters see the white baseball more clearly when it is released from the pitcher’s hand.
At Qualcomm, the batter’s eye was a few sections of seats covered by a tarp. At Petco, it’s a thin, dark-green rectangular tower with shatter-proof darkened windows, so police and private security officials can peer out without being seen behind the one-way glass.
The command center has a view of most of the park, and what isn’t visible to the eye can be glimpsed on portable video monitors. The center staff communicates with the roaming security force on radios or cell phones.
The fire command center has a grid of alarms on the wall that would pinpoint the location of an emergency. The largest of three medical centers is equipped with gurneys, medical equipment, a doctor’s office and a nurses station.
All employees carry identification cards with chips containing personal information. The machines record who is coming and going at what times and where, and the cards will block access to areas an employee is not authorized to enter.
Even tickets are bar-coded and contain seat information, making it possible for security to learn a seemingly drunk or rowdy fan’s seat number when he swipes his ticket upon entering Petco. Officers can then zoom in on him during the game to watch for potential problems.
“We’re doing everything we can to be proactive and make sure the building is safe,” Andersen said.
Getting around
During the college tournament, police found Petco’s design to be harder to navigate than Qualcomm, and it’s not as easy to move quickly from one level or area to another.
“In some respects it’s more difficult than Qualcomm . . . (for the officers) to get from one location to another; it’s not as fluid or friendly,” he said. “The way it’s constructed there are some locations that are not as easy to access.”
At Qualcomm, for example, officers could use the horse-shoe walkway from one side of the plaza level to the other. There’s more zig-zagging at Petco.
“Sometimes you have to go down, across and back up to get where you are going. Back, down over and up, using any combination of stairs, elevators and escalators,” Freestone said.
San Diego police have doubled the amount of officers patrolling what’s known as the “Ballpark District,” which includes the area inside 6th, Market, 14th and Harbor avenues. Police will not disclose the specific number.
The police presence was increased because of the possibility of crime in the Gaslamp area during the games, and the possible parking and traffic problems. Yet those negatives didn’t materialize during the college tournament, Freestone said.
“I’m happy to report we had no street robberies, no car thefts, or anything like that related to the ballpark. We had no violent crime at all,” the sergeant said.
Freestone estimated there were six arrests the first night for public drunkenness, with another six the rest of weekend. There were 10 games played over four days beginning March 11.
The number of officers will likely be adjusted downward if that trend continues and as officers become more familiar with the territory.
“Right now, with it being new, we want to err on the side of public safety,” Freestone said. “Everything went much better than we had planned and hoped for. Security-wise I have no concerns.”