Although arrest totals fluctuate year to year, they have trended slightly upward on a per-game basis since 2011, according to a Washington Post examination of police data from the past five seasons. Last year, 6.34 arrests per game were reported league-wide during the 17 weeks of the regular season. On the 10th week of the season, 126 arrests were made - the second-highest total during the five-year period. That was the most since 129 arrests were made in Week 14 of 2012.
The data assembled by The Post provide a snapshot into the factors the NFL and local law enforcement see as bellwethers for fan trouble. Division contests and night games result in considerably more fan arrests, according to arrest records collected from city, county and state police jurisdictions that oversee security at NFL stadiums. The later the kickoff, the greater the likelihood of arrests, the data show. Of the 15 games the past five seasons with the most arrests, a combined 705, nine of those contests began at 4 p.m. or later.
When division games are played at night, arrests are twice as high as early-afternoon non-division contests; the league and its network broadcast partners often schedule these division rivalry games in prime time.
If the home team loses, no matter the opponent or scheduled kickoff time, arrests increase. The closer the loss, the more arrests tend to rise.
The Post used public records laws to obtain data from 29 of the 31 jurisdictions with a stadium (The New York Giants and New York Jets share MetLife Stadium in New Jersey). Authorities in Cleveland and New Orleans did not provide documents despite repeated requests. To provide further context, The Post visited stadiums and interviewed more than two dozen NFL and law enforcement officials.
Officials at NFL headquarters dispute that games are unsafe or any perception that stadiums are anything but family-friendly. Behind the scenes, however, the league puts a high priority on controlling fan behavior and identifying possible trouble spots. Certain venues seem to be hotbeds for police activity, particularly in parking lots, where oversight is not regulated by the league office and where alcohol consumption goes largely unmonitored.
The data show per-game arrests over the past five seasons were highest at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, where police instituted stricter policies in 2013 following a violent parking lot brawl that involved thrown glass bottles. Following San Diego, where police made 24.58 arrests per game between 2011 and 2015, were the stadiums in New York (21.96 arrests per game), Oakland (17.78) and Pittsburgh (16.75). The NFL sees high arrest numbers at its stadiums in San Diego, New York and Pittsburgh as byproducts of those franchises' zero-tolerance policies; Oakland, though, is continually on the league's radar, along with San Francisco, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Philadelphia.
But the potential for trouble is hardly confined to those sites. Last October, a man was shot outside a Dallas Cowboys game at A&T Stadium and later died. A year earlier, a man at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home of the 49ers, was beaten so badly, his attorney said, the man now suffers from permanent seizure activity. In 2013, a 30-year-old man was beaten to death in the parking lot at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium.
Last November, Matthew Davis attended a Raiders game in Oakland with his girlfriend and two family members. On their way out, a Raiders fan approached Davis from behind and punched him so hard he would require a CT scan. The reason: Davis was wearing a Jets jersey.
The data assembled by The Post provide a snapshot into the factors the NFL and local law enforcement see as bellwethers for fan trouble. Division contests and night games result in considerably more fan arrests, according to arrest records collected from city, county and state police jurisdictions that oversee security at NFL stadiums. The later the kickoff, the greater the likelihood of arrests, the data show. Of the 15 games the past five seasons with the most arrests, a combined 705, nine of those contests began at 4 p.m. or later.
When division games are played at night, arrests are twice as high as early-afternoon non-division contests; the league and its network broadcast partners often schedule these division rivalry games in prime time.
If the home team loses, no matter the opponent or scheduled kickoff time, arrests increase. The closer the loss, the more arrests tend to rise.
The Post used public records laws to obtain data from 29 of the 31 jurisdictions with a stadium (The New York Giants and New York Jets share MetLife Stadium in New Jersey). Authorities in Cleveland and New Orleans did not provide documents despite repeated requests. To provide further context, The Post visited stadiums and interviewed more than two dozen NFL and law enforcement officials.
Officials at NFL headquarters dispute that games are unsafe or any perception that stadiums are anything but family-friendly. Behind the scenes, however, the league puts a high priority on controlling fan behavior and identifying possible trouble spots. Certain venues seem to be hotbeds for police activity, particularly in parking lots, where oversight is not regulated by the league office and where alcohol consumption goes largely unmonitored.
The data show per-game arrests over the past five seasons were highest at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, where police instituted stricter policies in 2013 following a violent parking lot brawl that involved thrown glass bottles. Following San Diego, where police made 24.58 arrests per game between 2011 and 2015, were the stadiums in New York (21.96 arrests per game), Oakland (17.78) and Pittsburgh (16.75). The NFL sees high arrest numbers at its stadiums in San Diego, New York and Pittsburgh as byproducts of those franchises' zero-tolerance policies; Oakland, though, is continually on the league's radar, along with San Francisco, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Philadelphia.
But the potential for trouble is hardly confined to those sites. Last October, a man was shot outside a Dallas Cowboys game at A&T Stadium and later died. A year earlier, a man at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home of the 49ers, was beaten so badly, his attorney said, the man now suffers from permanent seizure activity. In 2013, a 30-year-old man was beaten to death in the parking lot at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium.
Last November, Matthew Davis attended a Raiders game in Oakland with his girlfriend and two family members. On their way out, a Raiders fan approached Davis from behind and punched him so hard he would require a CT scan. The reason: Davis was wearing a Jets jersey.
