Officials in Santa Clara, California consider a ban on selling alcohol after halftime at the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium after a violent beating of a visiting fan, reports say.
After disturbing cell-phone footage of a group of 49ers fans viciously beating and kicking a man in a Vikings jersey hit the Internet, officials looked for ways to curtail this sort of violence in the future. Some suggest a ban on selling booze after halftime.
This week a trio of councilwomen gathered to ask for time to discuss the incident and a possible remedy for it during the next city council meeting.
“We really need to send a message that this type of behavior will not be tolerated,” Councilwoman Lisa Gillmor said on Monday.
Councilwoman Gillmor called the video “very disturbing” and seemed to think that drinking served as one of the root causes of the attack.
Councilwoman Teresa O’Neill also seemed to pin the attack on alcohol.
“I know they make a lot of money off of alcohol sales, but if people have an hour and a half (without alcohol) maybe they will cool down a bit,” O’Neill said.
For his part, Santa Clara Police Chief Michael Sellers said that many of the 30 or so arrests that happen every 49ers home game are related to over imbibing of alcohol. Still, the chief said that he didn’t think shutting down alcohol sales after halftime would make much difference.
“We have 70,000 fans, and less than a tenth of a percent are a problem. There is an element that will still behave badly,” the chief said. “It’s an individual choice.”
Four men were arrested for the fight which was uploaded to Facebook last week after Monday night’s game at Levi’s Stadium. Three of the four arrested were Felix Chavira, Juan Arias, and Eric Martinez. A single, un-armed security guard who had no back up broke up the fight, it was reported last week.
This isn’t the first fight leaving someone with terrible injuries. A fight in one of the bathrooms at Levi’s Stadium left one man partially paralyzed in 2014. The perpetrators of that fight, a pair of brothers, both had extensive criminal records.
A fan poll at 49ersWebZone shows that nearly as many fans support a halftime ban on beer sales as oppose it.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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