wfn.org | Jacobs Field cells hold 'Wahoo' protestors

["Barb Powell"<powellb@ucc.org>]

Nov. 5, 1997
United Church of Christ
In Cleveland, contact:
Arthur Lawrence Cribbs Jr.
(216) 736-2201
E-mail cribbsa@ucc.org
Hans Holznagel
(216) 736-2214
E-mail holznagh@ucc.org
On the Web:  www.ucc.org

Steel-door cells in Jacobs Field basement
becoming familiar stop for 'Wahoo' protestors
                                 
CLEVELAND - A little-known practice in professional sports,
locking fans in mini-jail cells on stadium property, is coming
to light this week as protestors against the Cleveland
baseball team's name and logo appear in court. 
     At the center of the story are two cells with steel doors
in the basement of Jacobs Field, a publicly built stadium
leased for private use to Cleveland's Major League Baseball
team. 
During post-season baseball games in October:
     -- Protestors were detained there for as long as three
hours, without being told why, and with or without charges
eventually being filed.
     -- They were brought to the cells, in some cases, from
outside the stadium.
     -- They were detained by off-duty city police officers,
wearing city police uniforms, working for a security firm that
is a subsidiary of the baseball team.
     Two United Church of Christ members -- one of whom was
never arrested or charged with a crime -- were among at least
four citizens locked up in the ballpark during two post-season
baseball games in October.
     Juanita Helphrey of Cleveland Heights, who works for the
UCC's national United Church Board for Homeland Ministries and
belongs to Cleveland's East View United Church of Christ, was
charged for demonstrating on a sidewalk outside Jacobs Field
-- but only after being held in a cell in the Jacobs Field
basement for an estimated three hours.  Helphrey and another
detained demonstrator, Juan Reyna of Cleveland, chairperson of
a local organization called the Committee of 500 Years of
Dignity and Resistance, were eventually taken from stadium
cells to the city jail and booked.  They are scheduled for a
pretrial hearing in Cleveland Municipal Court on Wednesday,
Nov. 5, on charges of criminal trespass and aggravated
disorderly conduct. 
     Reyna says he and Helphrey were taken into custody
between 6:30 and 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, when they refused
to leave a space often used by demonstrators, between Jacobs
Field and Gund Arena near Ontario Street.  They had arrived
there after leaving the vicinity of a rally near East 9th
Street and Bolivar, where an effigy of Cleveland's "Chief
Wahoo" mascot had been burned; Vernon Bellecourt of
Minneapolis had been arrested in connection with that
demonstration   and also taken into a Jacobs Field holding
cell.
     It was about 9:30 p.m. by the time Reyna was taken from
the stadium holding cell to the city jail and booked, Reyna
says.  Helphrey also was booked later. 
     James Watson of Lakewood, Ohio, a member of Iglesia
Buenas Nuevas, a UCC congregation on Cleveland's Near West
Side, said he spent about 30 minutes in one of the cells
during an Oct. 11 American League playoff game without being
told why.
     Watson said he and a colleague, both active in the
Committee of 500 Years, had entered the stadium with tickets
and had brought a banner objecting to the Cleveland Indians'
name and logo.  It bore the words "People, Not Mascots" and
the "Chief Wahoo" logo with a negation sign over it.  After a
failed attempt to hang the banner over a wall along the
left-field line, they moved to the area sometimes called the
"home run porch," just behind the left-field wall, and stood
there with the banner for a short time.  At least six members
of the Jacobs Field security force approached Watson. 
According to Watson, one of them said, "Come with me," and
would not tell Watson where or why.  The officials then
twisted his arm behind his back and took him to the basement
cell. They confiscated his banner and later ejected him,
without explanation and without any formal arrest or booking.
     A few selected phone calls this week revealed that
similar stadium jail cells exist at other U.S. sports venues. 
San Francisco's 3-Com (formerly Candlestick) Park, under city
and county operation, has a substation operated by that city's
police department.  But at Cleveland's Jacobs Field -- as at,
for example, Chicago's Comiskey Park and Kansas City's
Arrowhead Stadium -- the security room or detention area is
operated by the ballpark security staff and is not discussed
publicly.
     "I would say it's a very common thing in any
event-marketing facility -- an arena, a ballpark, a football
stadium -- to have a place to separate the disorderly from the
orderly," said Bob DiBiasio, spokeperson for Cleveland's Major
League Baseball team.  The team has a lease with the owner of
Jacobs Field, the nonprofit Gateway Economic Development
Corp., to use the ballpark.  Crowd control and crowd safety
are among the team's responsibilities.
     "You have to remember, with 44,000 fans attending a game,
we are larger than most suburbs," DiBiasio said.  "We have to
have police services, fire services, sanitation, recycling,
food services -- and we have to deal with the disorderly."  He
acknowledged that there is a "holding area for our security
personnel to calm people down," and said "drunk and disorderly
fans" were among those sometimes taken there.  But he would
not describe the cells, saying, "We don't give out details on
that area."
     Not every troublesome fan is detained, DiBiasio said.  He
said he did not know what criteria would be used by Jacobs
Field security officials to decide when to detain or eject
someone, saying, "I'm sure they've got their internal
guidelines."
     "To get to the level to be detained there has to
obviously be some kind of serious infraction," he said, "so
therefore, the Cleveland Police have to be called upon because
they're the experts."
     DiBiasio was not familiar with Watson's ejection.  "We do
have a policy on banners," DiBiasio said.  "You can bring them
in.  We have the right to ask you to remove it if it is of a
certain political bent, or profane, or commercial in any way,
shape or form.  We do have the right to remove signs."  He
said he also did not know the details of Helphrey's or Reyna's
arrest or whether either of the incidents -- detaining a fan
inside the stadium with a sign critical of the team's logo and
mascot, or bringing demonstrators into the holding cell
from outside -- was normal procedure.
     One thing that should be normal procedure, said Deputy
Chief Martin Flask of the Cleveland Police Department, is
telling people why they are being detained.  This should
happen whenever a city police officer -- even one who is
off-duty and working in police uniform as a security officer
-- detains someone at a venue such as Jacobs Field.
     Off-duty Cleveland police officers regularly wear city
police uniforms to work as part of the security force inside
Jacobs Field, as employees of Ballpark Management Company, a
subsidiary of the Cleveland baseball team, Flask said.  They
do likewise for Gateway Security, a separate company
contracted for security on property surrounding Jacobs Field,
he said.  The police department is well aware of this and has
a manual of rules and regulations for such "secondary
employment," he said.  He estimated that 40 to 45 police
officers serve inside the ballpark at each game.
     Flask said he knew of two holding cells in the basement
of Jacobs Field.  Speaking generally about their use, he said
that when ballpark security calls the city police department
to have a detained fan transported to the city jail, "our goal
would be to respond as quickly as we possibly can," Flask
said.  "It may range from five or six minutes to an hour or
two."  He said a two-hour detention in a Jacobs Field holding
cell would strike him as "unusually long," and "I'd start
questioning why it took so long."
     The United Church of Christ has national offices in
downtown Cleveland across Huron Road from Jacobs Field and
Gund Arena.  Some of its national agencies and local members
have been active in opposing the use of American Indian names
and logos by sports teams.  In 1991, the UCC's General Synod,
a national body of delegates, passed a resolution opposing
"negative stereotypes" in sports and commerce.  Like all
national bodies of the UCC, the General Synod speaks to, and
not for, the denomination's 1.5 million members and 6,100
local churches.
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