Paycom Center (formerly Chesapeake Arena)

[Anonymous.]

Urbanized is just stuck on the idea that Thunder Alley is the reason this shooting occurred.

If you use his logic, you can say OKC having an NBA team is also the reason this occurred.

Just because an event placed 'bad people' in an area does not make the event the end-all. Police presence is the main factor. No wanna-be gang banger 16 year olds are going to pull out guns when there is blue and reds all over the place. OKC just needs to employ a stronger police force during playoff watch parties.

They already do a good job during regular season games with helicopter and ground support all around the arena. Why not add more? Bicycles, foot police, plain clothes etc.

Some stupid kids should not be a legitimate reason for shutting down an event for thousands of people. Charging admission to sit outside the Arena is a joke.


I saw a news clip the other day saying OKC has not hired an additional police officer in 2 years. Considering the growth of events and downtown in general, it sounds like OKC PD needs more $$$$$$$.

[Larry OKC]

Anon: there was the recession where they didn't fill vacant positions (due to retirement etc). But recently announced they are adding more officers. Just this last week, they reiterated that they needed about 200 or so more officers but that would require a tax increase to permanently fund it.

[betts]

I don't know. On a lot of weekends in Bricktown I see the policemen sitting in their cars yacking with each other. I'm not too excited about seeing more of them doing the same at my expense. Perhaps they should be walking beats in Bricktown if we want them to act as a deterrent. Of perhaps mounted police would be a better idea. At least they would be picturesque.

[Praedura]

...perhaps mounted police would be a better idea. At least they would be picturesque.

And their horses would leave behind picturesque momentos as well.

[CaptDave]

Betts, I am right there with you. I also don't like how they park their cars in the middle of the streets with their emergency lights on and then just go sit on the side of the road. I am sure they think they are helping by being so visible but in fact it just makes the whole outdoor space seem tense and uninviting. A police officer just walking down the sidewalk goes wonders for making a place feel safer.

We have completely lost the idea of the neighborhood cop walking his beat. One or two police officers on foot is far more effective than a car driving by or sitting in a parking lot. The bad guys merely wait for them to drive past whereas foot patrols have the effect of a constant presence.

I sincerely hope the city will reopen Thunder Alley for fans to watch the game later this season - it was a great community building event.

[jn1780]

And what if the shooting had happened inside the Arena during a game? Would they have canceled the rest of the games? Or barred anyone from entering the building during the game etc. IMO, it was an extreme over reaction. They claim the crowds became uncontrolable yet they don't seem to have any problems (or few problems) with other outdoor downtown large scale events (a/k/a Opening Night etc)

That's just one night a year. Increasing presence for several home playoff games gets expensive after a while.

And you have to do this for the entire area surrounding the arena including Bricktown . It can be done just depends how much the taxpayer is willing to fork over. Maybe they could limit Thunder Alley to just Western Confernce championship and above playoff rounds?

[Larry OKC]

jn1780: granted Opening Night is just for 1 night, but other large scale events take place without the call for eliminating those when something happens. The point is that crowds can be controlled and it was a rather lame excuse offered. Yes it could add up but how many playoff games would there be at the max? The event organizers should be paying for any increase in security required by their event. if not mistaken the Thunder Alley (that continued after the game started) was not going on during the regular season games. Just the pregame activities???

[Urbanized]

Urbanized is just stuck on the idea that Thunder Alley is the reason this shooting occurred...

No, not at all. The REASON the shooting occurred is that some people are stupid, reckless, criminal, or whatever. Those PEOPLE are the reason the shooting occurred. The problem with Thunder Alley as it existed is that it began to specifically attract those people. It was the porch light, and they were the moths. It was FREE, uncontrolled and lots of fun. Word had gotten out through the grapevine (and via national TV, by the way) that it was a big, FREE, spontaneous (and uncontrolled) party. If you went to all of those games (I did) you could see the massive, rapid decline over just 2-3 games. Instead of team gear, lots of people started showing up in basically what amounted to club wear. There was even a thread started on this board BEFORE the shooting where someone else who attended tried to point that out and was almost universally-derided as an alarmist or worse.

In the same thread, but AFTER the shooting, SoonerBoy18 said:

I was at Thunder alley with a few other people and we got lost like 3 times. And my god! Half those people didnt even go to WATCH the game, there were people coming to Thunder Alley like it was a club. Sad!

Let me paint this picture for you: someone in your neighborhood allows their kids to have regular pool parties that become hugely popular with their friends. Because they and their friends are all good kids, the folks don't bother with a lot of supervision. Maybe they even let the occasional beer slip in. Now, what if kids from another school hear about it and crash, and the party turns into a full-on kegger? And what if the full-on kegger spawns a bunch of fights on the streets of the surrounding housing addition? What if the surrounding neighborhood gets trashed? Is it the fault of the neighborhood? Surely not. And even if you really like the parents and the kids who hosted the pool party and don't want to fault them, the fact of the matter is the party grew out of control too fast. As a neighbor I will be relieved if they stop having the parties, OR if they ever have another one that it has better planning, security and supervision.

[Urbanized]

jn1780: granted Opening Night is just for 1 night, but other large scale events take place without the call for eliminating those when something happens. The point is that crowds can be controlled and it was a rather lame excuse offered. Yes it could add up but how many playoff games would there be at the max? The event organizers should be paying for any increase in security required by their event. if not mistaken the Thunder Alley (that continued after the game started) was not going on during the regular season games. Just the pregame activities???

Larry, Opening Night is not analogous. It does not bring the same crowd in any way, shape or form. It is a TICKETED event. It is adult- and family-oriented. Unaccompanied minors are not allowed into venues, and beyond that it is not especially appealing to minors anyway. It is alcohol-free. It happens mostly indoors, except for the ball drop. The large crowd that congregates for the ball drop starts pooling (coming from smaller, more-controlled venues) about a half-hour before and leaves almost immediately after, usually because it is COLD.

A much better comparison is July 4th. That is a very family-friendly event too, but free with uncontrolled admission and abundant free parking around. Minors can come and go as they please. Due to this, back around '04 or '05 Bricktown began to see significant security challenges on the 4th, primarily very late after the fireworks and after families had left. Large groups of people stuck around to "cruise" Bricktown on foot. Once ('05) I think, a mass of people took over Mickey Mantle and the canal overlook plaza and used the street as an impromptu nightclub, thanks to the loud music coming down from the club on the 4th floor of JDM. It got super-dicey. There were only a couple of police officers on duty in Bricktown at the time, and they had to disperse that crowd with some pretty aggressive tactics.

The next summer (I believe) was when the first shooting happened late night in Bricktown, and there was swift response, which included the Bricktown overtime program and introduction of the curfew, which has since swung back and forth between aggressive enforcement and not much at all, depending on the whims of the public and whose 14 year old got caught up in the curfew. When it is rigidly enforced it is hugely successful. Late night street sweeps have also greatly reduced the 4th of July problems.

The reason I mention all of this is to show that simply more cops thrown at a problem is not necessarily the answer. There are probably literally 20x the police officers downtown on July 4th than on New Years Eve, and for good reason. There were also many, many cops on the street in Bricktown the night of the Thunder Alley-related shooting. The TYPE of event, the PRICE, and the EASE OF ACCESS and the PERCEIVED PERMISSIVENESS of organizers has a great deal to do with whether or not bad actors will show up.

[Urbanized]

Also Larry, I am disappointed in your research into whether TA was the environment that led to the shooting. You are usually the best archivist on the board, but missed much of the information (and the point) here.

First, regarding the story you pulled your quote from, keep in mind that this was shortly after the event itself, and information was still developing. There has been widespread misinterpretation of some of the statements regarding whether it was sports-related. Much of the speculation in the hours after centered on the idea that it might have been a sports-related beef; that is a Thunder fan popping off to a Lakers fan and getting shot for it, or vice-versa. Some of those quotes from various parties were meant to diffuse that idea, especially when it started to become clear that the thing really was a simple run-of-the-mill high-school beef (over a stolen iPhone) gone bad.

One of the quotes you used was from the team's director of communications. I have great respect for him (and would have handled it exactly the same way were I in his position), but his JOB was to distance the team from the event. Make no mistake, if the event had nothing to do with the troubles, the team (and the City) would not have allowed the plug to be pulled. It was a fantastic event, until a bunch of jerks insisted on ruining it. I sensed it that night and left a playoff game early for the first time ever, just to get ahead of the crowd that I felt was troublesome and more than a bit menacing. I wasn't the only one, as this story in The Oklahoman points out:

Fairbanks and his brother, Rob Fairbanks, were among several witnesses to the shooting along Reno near Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark.

Fairbanks looked down and saw he was standing on bloodstained concrete. He picked up the slug of a bullet that lay at his feet.

In retrospect, he said, there was a tension in the air as soon as he and his brother stepped outside the Chesapeake Energy Arena. Thousands of ticketholders spilled out of the arena onto streets where thousands more were watching the game. Others were downtown for entirely different reasons.

“There were several groups of people who were yelling at each other, almost getting into fights, and all of them appeared to not have been there for the game,” he said. “None of them were wearing team colors of any sort.”

THIS story contained other quotes that agreed with this:

Between five and seven minutes after leaving the arena, fan Chris Turan, of Oklahoma City, heard six to eight gunshots ring out and ran for cover.

Turan said the atmosphere Monday night was different from other playoffs games he'd attended.

“I thought the element of the spectators changed for the worse tonight. There seemed to be a lot of people out there looking for trouble,” Turan said.

Tyler Maxwell and Tasha Bacon, of Oklahoma City, watched the game from Thunder Alley, like they had the other playoff games. When the shots rang out, they were in a parking lot just west of the shooting scenes.

“After Game 2, we got stuck in traffic for an hour and a half because there was all kind of fighting ... ” Maxwell said.

“It's gotten more and more intense every time we're been out here,” he said.

“The playoffs are (good) for our city, but they're starting to bring violence. I can't imagine what would happen if this was the NBA Finals,” Maxwell said.

“We were walking around and every other person was saying, ‘I'm scared.' We come down here all the time and have never seen anything like this,” Bacon said.

And it DID become very clear that all of the parties to the shooting (alleged shooter, the friend that accompanied him, and even the victims) were in the area to hang out in Thunder Alley, whether they were there to watch the game or not. In the same story in The Oklahoman the lawyer and the mother of the (apparently innocent) kid who accompanied the alleged shooter that night BOTH say that he and the shooter specifically were there for TA festivities:

“Police are really, really close to wrapping up their investigation,” Hill's attorney, Billy Bock, said after meeting with his client. “He's not the shooter.”

The attorney described Hill as a Lakers fan who also likes the Thunder, but the attorney said the shooting had nothing to do with the game.

“He went down to the game with the shooter,” Bock said. “They were in Thunder Alley. Everything will come out in the next few days. ... It didn't have anything to do with Thunder and Lakers. ... It wasn't a fan-based situation. Some people knew each other from school and some other things and, you know, people get hostile.”

and

Rodney Hill's mother, Regina Hill, said her son went to Thunder Alley to watch the game but didn't shoot anyone.

“He wasn't involved in what was going on,” she said. “He wasn't the person who did it. I don't know exactly what happened down there, but I do know he wasn't the one who shot the people.”

Also, the most seriously-affected victim was coming from Thunder Alley. It's pretty clear he was a totally innocent bystander, but I bring it up to underscore that this happened as he was on his way from TA to the free parking at Bass Pro after the game, which supports the idea that this happened in the huge surge of people migrating from TA to the most well-known and popular mass of free parking in the area. This article bears that out:

Richards was apparently shot at random by a stranger as he was walking back to his car after a watch party outside Chesapeake Energy Arena. Seven others were also shot, but only Richards suffered life-threatening injuries.

With his best friend, Xavier, in tow, Richards went to Thunder Alley that night because he's a die-hard sports fan and the Thunder is his favorite team, Quinn-Powell said. Now her son will watch his team play for a championship via the television in his room on the hospital's fifth floor.

And even some of the quotes in the story you pulled quotes from (which I have also quoted here) disagree with the notion that the incident did not originate in Thunder Alley:

Police Chief Bill Citty said he and Mayor Mick Cornett met Tuesday afternoon to discuss the incident and concerns that the crowd outside was getting too large.

“We're discussing alternatives to Thunder Alley,” Citty said. “You are getting such large crowds that they become uncontrollable.

Citty said there are some indications the altercation that ended in gunfire in Bricktown about 12:30 a.m. originated in Thunder Alley, but the crowd size would be a concern even without the shooting.

“You could have something else,” Citty said. “Maybe someone gets sick or there is a medical problem. It creates problems.”

I'm just saying that I attended all of those games. I saw the change in the outdoor crowd described by those above. I also regularly talk with many of the police officers assigned to Bricktown, even sometimes having coffee with some of them. I'm not just making this stuff up to talk about it on the Internet. This event became less about OKC and the Thunder and more about a free outdoor party in a basically uncontrolled environment. If they can find a way to restore the family environment that the event had up until the last few games, then by all means, I am TOTALLY about bringing it back. But it will have to be structured quite differently (actually, structured AT ALL would be a good start), or it will once again be the porch light that attracts the moths. That is the hard truth.

[Larry OKC]

Urbanized: i acknowledged the fact that the report I pulled up was early on, and asked for differing reports. I din't recall anything that differed from the early ones. But I didn't follow it that closely and didn't feel like doing an exhaustive search. And yes, the earliest one said that there were some indications that it originated in Thunder Alley (but later in the same story, they said it didn't).

All of that said, I am not disagreeing with your idea that they can do things differently and bring it back. My point is that Thunder Alley wasn't the cause. Related? Yes. Cause? No. So the canceling of the event that was great for the City was extreme over reaction by the Council and the Team. IMO

[Urbanized]

Larry, that is just semantics. You are absolutely right; the event didn't cause the shooting, but rather bad judgment and unrelated petty squabbles among violent individuals did cause it. I just think you are failing to see the big picture though, and are getting lost in this wordplay.

Perhaps if you had actually been down there on the street, and at those games, with many other preceding evenings to compare them to, you would get what I am saying. I was on the street those nights, including standing on a sidewalk watching the police & rescue response after the shooting. It went from awesome made-for-TV family community pride event to scary and dangerous over the course of 2-3 games. Rapid descent.

Though criminal behavior and high school squabbles were the cause (or bad parenting, or whatever you want to attribute it to), the fact of the matter is the last 2-3 nights of its existence that event started drawing many dozens, and likely hundreds of people who were only a shoulder-bump, careless word, or stolen phone away from violence. It was a powder keg. It wasn't just this one kid.

By chance I had a conversation with Craig Sager of the TNT broadcast team the next day - a guy who has covered every city in the NBA for years, many of them far more gritty than OKC - and he completely agreed. He had stepped outside during the game and was very uncomfortable with what he saw, and said he knew at the time that it wouldn't end well. He mentioned other markets (Dallas, Memphis) that had exactly the same problems surrounding ostensibly community-focused FREE events and had to cancel them.

The problem with the event the way it was structured (or rather, UN-structured), was that it unwittingly encouraged and attracted this activity. So was it the CAUSE? Well, you can debate semantics all you want, but the fact remains that the people involved would not have been there but for the event. And I am as certain as the day is long that if the event had defiantly continued in its same form - as you seem to believe it should have - there would have been more violence of the same nature, and that families and others would have stopped going altogether, and even start thinking twice about going to Thunder games at all. It was absolutely the right and prudent thing to shut it down.

That said, I believe it is ALSO absolutely correct to explore ways to recapture the same magic that preceded the violence, and make plans leading up to this season's playoffs to reintroduce a new and improved Thunder Alley watch party, if it can be done in a relatively safe and CONTROLLED manner.

[jedicurt]

I like the new entrance...

[Urbanized]

The new entrance definitely makes it easier to walk right in to Old No. 7, and the new restaurant across the hall seems to be easing the crushing crowd problem Old No. 7 was having before games and at halftime.

I think they need to figure out the security/wanding procedure though, at that entrance and at the others. I usually hit the door about 20 minutes before tipoff, and that has been way to late the past few games, with crowds backed up at every entrance, worse than in preceding games (other than playoffs).

[BDP]

...but the fact remains that the people involved would not have been there but for the event.

That's not a fact. It's imaginative speculation. And, there was violence in bricktown before thunder alley and there will probably be violence there again, especially if it remains conducive to loitering.

That being said, I think it is evident that Oklahoma City does not have the capacity to secure such large scale open events on a regular basis.

[Urbanized]

That's not a fact. It's imaginative speculation. And, there was violence in bricktown before thunder alley and there will probably be violence there again, especially if it remains conducive to loitering.

That being said, I think it is evident that Oklahoma City does not have the capacity to secure such large scale open events on a regular basis.

How is it imaginative speculation? Every single one of them admitted they SPECIFICALLY came for the event. They didn't come for a movie, they didn't come to bowl, the didn't come for Marble Slab, they didn't come for a steak at Mickey Mantle's. Did anybody bother to READ the articles I linked to?

Please, BY ALL MEANS, join me next Monday night (or any Monday night, for that matter) and let's walk around Bricktown counting gangbangers, thugs and other ne'er-do-wells. I'll buy the beer. And I promise we will be the closest thing to ne'er-do-wells down here, assuming we're not wearing suits and assuming there is not an event at the arena that specifically attracts them. Do those people exist in Bricktown on other nights of the week? Absolutely - almost always it's between 10:30 PM and 1:30 AM on Saturdays (and to a lesser extent Fridays), mostly in the summer. I can even draw you a picture of their typical pedestrian traffic pattern, because I have watched it very closely (and first-hand) for close to a decade.

I am WELL aware of the problems Bricktown has experienced. In the past on this board (including this thread) I have shared more backstory info on these types of issues than I probably should have, in fact. I was on the board of directors of the Bricktown Association when it first came to a head. I sat in meetings with everyone from the Chief of Police to beat cops to City Council members as a response was formulated and as the curfew was enacted. I was also the only board/staff representative on hand the weekend after the first shooting and personally had to stay down here until 2 AM to handle the inevitable media requests. Beyond that, I am one of the few people in Bricktown who is here at ALL times of the day and week (most property owners and office workers are here M-F 9-5; most bar and restaurant owners are here later but are mostly inside their places the whole time) watching it alternate between office district to family destination to business hub to club scene to event central, depending on the time of day, week and year. I would go so far as to say very few people in this city are better acquainted with the ins and outs of this district, owing to my particular history and role here.

There is no doubt Bricktown has had and will have challenges. It likely always will, because it is now a very mainstream place and because "remaining conducive to loitering" is not only a part of being a well-known outdoor entertainment district (it's actually the point), it is also THE LAW. Since it is public space - unlike a shopping mall - it is simply illegal to throw someone out of the district or off of the street because you don't like the way they carry themselves.

I'm very open about the challenges Bricktown faces, including the sporadic violence issues. I'm happy to discuss them openly anytime (preferably in person) with open-minded, rational people. But this particular incident had almost zero to do with Bricktown, other than that Bricktown has a well-known longstanding sea of free public parking south of Reno, which is packed when people attend large events at Chesapeake. That's generally not a problem when the event is Mannheim Steamroller or the gay rodeo, but much more of a problem if it appeals to people like the kids involved in this incident. in this case, the event is what put the actor(s) here, and that is not in any way conjecture. The fact that we're even discussing this after all of the documented evidence is - in a word - silly. It also only shows how little people understand the ACTUAL ebbs and flows of the Bricktown district, which I think is by far the most complex and hard-to-fully-understand district in OKC.

[Urbanized]

And by the way, BDP, I think OKC absolutely has the capacity to secure such events. The key word in your sentence statement was "open." It's a bad idea, especially when it is the type of event sure to draw large numbers of unaccompanied minors.

[Richard at Remax]

Im with Urbanized, as a season ticket holder who attended all the playoff games, it just got worse and worse and worse. You could feel it in the air after leaving each game. Granted the shooting had nothing to do with the actual game or team, it is naive to think that all those people wanting to posturize and cause trouble would have been down there if there wasn't Thunder Alley in the state it had gotten.

[HangryHippo]

Any chance we can take the arguments over Thunder Alley elsewhere? I keep checking this thread, naively thinking that there will be pictures from inside the new entrance, but it's just more arguing about the unfortunate incident and it's tiresome, at least to me.

[Larry OKC]

i just don't understand the logical disconnect that is going on here. I am one of those "big picture" people.

How can you say that it was Thunder Alley yet not make the same connection with the game and the team? Maybe we should just send the Thunder packing because if they hadn't come here and did well enough to make the playoffs, there wouldn't have been a Thunder Alley for those folks to attend. it isn't just semantics as Urbanized started the conversation with this:

The shooting was the direct result of Thunder Alley events.

Do I think that the event should have continued? Absolutely. In its current form? No. I agree that charging something can help keep the riff-raff out but on the other hand why should this be reserved for only those that can afford it. This is supposed to be a community builder, pride for the City etc., take away the occasional free factor and you risk taking a lot of that away. But I do agree that even a nominal admission charge (say $1) might help too. Or still make tickets free but required to attend as is done at some events.

As with the recent election, lets find common ground and move forward.

[jedicurt]

Any chance we can take the arguments over Thunder Alley elsewhere? I keep checking this thread, naively thinking that there will be pictures from inside the new entrance, but it's just more arguing about the unfortunate incident and it's tiresome, at least to me.

i tried a bit ago, but alas, i failed. What i did notice involving the new entrance, is that it was a breeze for me to leave that way. i made it from my seat (section 320) to outside the arena in about 2 minutes... it was much better than the normal 10 when the arena was as empty as it was, and as long as 15 minutes when it has been a close game

[Richard at Remax]

Just to clarify my above comments about it having nothing to do with the team, I meant it in a way like it wasn't an incident, for example, like that dodgers fan beating the crap out of that Giants fan and putting him into a coma. Or anyone running across a raiders fan. It was an outside conflict that was brought to thunder alley, if that makes sense.


As for the arena itself, the flow seems to go a lot smoother now inside the arena. However the last two games, the lines to get in have been ridiculously long to get in, even longer than the playoffs. THey seem really short staffed with the wands.

[OKCDrummer77]

This thread at OKCThunderfans.com has a couple of nice pics of the inside of the new entrance:

Grand Entrance, new restaurant, Kids Zone among new features at Arena

[BDP]

How is it imaginative speculation? Every single one of them admitted they SPECIFICALLY came for the event. They didn't come for a movie, they didn't come to bowl, the didn't come for Marble Slab, they didn't come for a steak at Mickey Mantle's

How can it not be? You can't really call something based on an alternate reality anything but speculation. They were there for the event, sure, but no one has any idea what these people would have done if there wasn't an event. They can't even say what they would have done. Unless you have access to the parallel universe in which there was not an event an they didn't go downtown, then it's simply not a fact.

The key word in your sentence statement was "open."

That's why I included it.

[Urbanized]

Good grief, I give up. The obvious desire by many to lay that particular tragedy at the feet of Bricktown flies in the face of all reasonable evidence, but is noted. It is actually understandable, as Bricktown (admittedly largely of its own doing) has few if any defenders these days and many detractors. In this instance though, it is absolutely wrong-headed and unfortunate, and belies a lack of full understanding of the TA event itself as it progressed from great to frightening, plus a DEFINITE lack of knowledge regarding what Bricktown looks like on any other Monday night.

If people would just like to bag on Bricktown I'd suggest creating a thread for that purpose. I'm sure there would be no complaints on here.

In the case of this thread, the one about Chesapeake Arena, someone asked what could be done to bring back the Thunder Alley watch party, and I offered what I thought were constructive suggestions, based on my close and highly-interested personal (and IN-PERSON) observations of what transpired previously, based on discussions I have had with law enforcement and others, and based on the things that have previously caused similar problems in the area. If someone wants to incorporate them into a plan to bring back TA, I hope they do and offer my observations freely. However, it seems more like a number of people might instead just prefer to bring back TA as-is, AND to simply bulldoze Bricktown, so that future shootings might instead happen instead on an unnamed patch of dirt. Whatever.