Cincinnati Bengal officials have set up a system that allows fans in attendance to monitor other fans for rowdy behavior.
An Associated Press story detailed the team’s plan for the upcoming season to set up a hotline number that fans can call from cell phones during games to report bad behavior, such as excessive profanity, fighting and drunkenness. Video cameras will be focused on the offending fans and security personnel will respond. Fans involved in the behavior will be warned first, then will be subject to ejection, loss of season tickets and even arrest if the behavior continues.
This seems to be an efficient way to monitor the problem. Fans experiencing a negative externality from the obscenity-laced hollering of some drunken dope, obscenities that would make George Carlin blush, now have a way to make the rowdy fan internalize that externality (I’ll get your arse kicked out of here, mein betrunkener Freund, if you don’t pipe down). The Bengals don’t have to hire folks to police the stands, patrolling around like secret police, wondering if the behavior that bothers them bothers those in attendance. All fans have to do is decide if they’ve had enough and call the appropriate number… and that can be done fairly discreetly.
Moreover, because they can target certain areas of the stadium where trouble is actually occurring, this policy cuts down on the number of video cameras that the Bengals would need to have on hand.
But fan rowdiness isn’t the only problem Bengals officials face. Many of the players can’t seem to keep from getting thrown in the joint.
