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AT&T Park focuses on teenage drinking
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SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Starting this evening, Giants fans may notice authorities stepping up enforcement against a pastime older than baseball itself: underage drinking.
With the tragic death last week of 18-year-old Anthony Giraudo outside of AT&T Park and a jury deliberating in the 2004 ballpark killing of 21-year-old Timothy Griffith, there will be tighter searches at the gates and a keener eye in the parking lot and Caltrain station, according to San Francisco police and a Giants spokeswoman.
While neither case is connected, there are a few parallels. Both killings took place after a heated argument; the participants were either too young or barely old enough to drink; and prosecutors in both cases say drunkenness was a factor.
How much of a role alcohol played in the deaths of the two men may never be completely clear, but police are stepping up enforcement regardless. During the involuntary manslaughter arraignment of Taylor Buckley, a Carlmont High School senior accused of killing Giraudo, the prosecutor noted that one of Buckley’s high school friends was ejected from the game for drunkenness.
The drinking may have begun much earlier on Caltrain, according to police and witnesses. Kitty Clark, a mother who commutes between Belmont and San Francisco, said she was on Caltrain the night of Giraudo’s death as high school students drank on the quick ride to San Francisco.
“They were sauced,” Clark said. “And where did they get all this, looking like the children that they were? Six packs, 12 packs, full bottles of hard liquor and empties rolling up and down the aisle.”
Caltrain prohibits passengers from carrying open containers when traveling after 9 p.m., but alcohol is allowed otherwise. Conductors walk the trains and watch for disturbances, but they’re not allowed to ask for identification, Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said. Instead, conductors radio ahead to report problems to transit police, who are assigned by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department.
“Any time people go to the ballgame, we want them to enjoy themselves,” Dunn said. “Having a beer is part of that experience.”
Having a beer at the ballpark is also part of the experience, said Staci Slaughter, a spokeswoman for the Giants, but not if it comes from outside the ballpark, and especially not if the drinker is under 21 years old.
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9:37 PM MST on Tue., May. 20, 2008 re: "AT&T Park focuses on teenage drinking"
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Examiner Reader said:
Take a look at some of these kids Facebook pages and you will see that they have nightly beer pong drinking games at their parents homes while some of the parents are in the pictures playing beer pong right along side of them. Why don't the police take a look at these pages and talk to these parents! My daughter came home the other night telling me she left a party where parents bought all the beer for beer pong and allowed them to drink. It's out of control these parents letting these kids drink and get out of control while pictures are all over the Internet and bragging about how drunk they were while at a friends house and the father is playing along with the teens...Come on parents wake up and control your kids...
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Examiner Reader said:
i have been to a bunch of ginats games but i am done going to them after the last one i went to the train is the only way i get there and last time an old man and his grandchildren were on there was back from the park a bunch of drunk kids started a fight on the train and knocked into the old man it made me sick to my stomach the games are a place where kids get drunk they dont even watch the games they stand in the back near the big glove and get wasted something needs to be done.
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Examiner Reader said:
Well it’s unfortunate that things like this happen. I am a security guard for the San Francisco Giants and I would have to say we try our best to confront and eject problematic fans before and during the game. However, it seems we have just enough security staff per game to make it legal. We definitely could use more staff. Most fans arrive 35 before game time. We literally have about 20,000 fans entering per gate with roughly 6 under paid guards checking bags. I could never understand the politics behind this. The San Francisco Giants are ranked the second best customer service and internal shop scores in the MLB league. We are also one of the lowest paid security departments in the MLB. The Giants organizations are very irresponsible. The Giants rent out the stadium almost daily for private events and you would think they would treat there employees better. There’s only so much we can do working a huge event like this daily. The Giants have been very lucky that they have
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Examiner Reader said:
I ride the train to and from work. I'm amazed at the amount of teenage drinking that takes place on the trains before a Giants game. It's like being in a drunken frat party, but only with teenagers. You see them on the train platforms with their cases of beer waiting for the trains to show up. Then once they're on the train, it's a race to see how much they can drink before arriving at the SF train station. And no one does a thing about it. Why don't the authorities place some policemen at the stations to stop the teenagers from getting on the trains with booze? This would stop the problem before it starts.
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BayAreaStudent said:
Ah, yes. More developments not geared towards working class natives. Yes, any new large residential developments in the City are required to reserve a certain percentage of the units at "affordable housing" rates, but that's hardly enough to curb the exodus of the City's most economically disadvantaged... or maybe that's what the city planners want. It seems like all these high rise condos going up around the City, especially in South Beach/Mission Bay, are for transplants from outside of the Bay Area. I just hope the Giants know that if they plan to put a Giants dugout in this development, they'll probably make more money selling BloSox gear.
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