On gamedays, The Swamp becomes a fortress.
During each home game, officers from Gainesville Police, University Police, Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and FBI liaisons work together to monitor criminal activity and provide security at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Lt. William Gainey, UPD’s special events coordinator, said he spends about 70 hours each week during football season choreographing the flow of security, teams, and fans in and out of the stadium.
In the 13 years he has worked home games, Gainey has only missed one: His daughter was being born.
On Saturday morning before kickoff for UF’s Homecoming game, Gainey led security protocol briefings with officers from different police agencies and representatives from the University Athletic Association.
For some, it was the last time they’d be off their feet for the next 10 hours.
“You don’t really get any breaks,” Gainey said.
From their stadium command post, employees with the City of Gainesville’s Traffic Operations Division used computers and cameras to control every traffic light from Interstate 75 to The Swamp and watch over GPD officers working near intersections.
At the corner of Gale Lemerand Drive and Southwest Archer Road early Saturday morning, GPD officers Ben Tobias and Lynne Valdes waited for the call from dispatch to shut down the intersection.
At about 9:50 a.m., their radios buzzed with chatter as the first motorcade started on its way.
Down the road, flashing lights from the motorcade grew brighter as the escort approached the intersection. Tobias opened the corner traffic box, flipped a switch to manual control and plugged in what he called a “traffic-cutter” wire.
The process repeated two more times: when NCAA referees arrived in a white van and when the University of Louisiana’s team was escorted by an ASO motorcade.
Near the stadium’s north end zone, GPD officers managed security during the Gator Walk while UPD officers at the south end zone escorted Louisiana players onto the field and to their locker room.
“How’s it going, LT?” said an officer from his motorcycle as Gainey walked by.
“Pretty good, how about you?”
“Another day in paradise,” the officer said. “And a perfect day for football.”
With almost an hour and a half to kickoff, UPD, GPD and ASO officers began filing fans into the stadium, searching their bags and watching for suspicious behavior.
“What we’re doing here is protecting 90,000 people, and we don’t take that very lightly,” Gainey said. “Every entrance to the stadium has a uniform.”
By the south end zone, GPD Detective Blair Ettinger stood on watch with five other officers as fans entered the stadium. Ettinger said he’s seen people bring in fake toy guns, full bottles of liquor, drugs and even a flask disguised as a pair of binoculars.
“We just have a wide variety of weird things that have come in,” he said. “We’ve seen some interesting things in bags.”
By the end of Saturday’s game, police had ejected 17 people for possession of alcohol, disorderly conduct and false student IDs. Officers also arrested one person for disorderly intoxication, according to a UPD news release.
The most people police ejected from a game this season occurred when officers kicked out 106 people during the Louisiana State University game on Oct. 6, according to UPD news release archives.
Inside the east side booking station, located in the student ticket office, calmer rule-breakers are kept up front, while those being processed for arrest at the Alachua County Jail are sent to the back. It only takes about 20 people to make the 1,000-square-foot room crowded.
At times, a line of people waiting to be processed can stretch outside the door and around the side of the stadium, said UPD Lt. Mitchal Welsh, who’s worked the booking room for the last seven years.
“It’s like a nightclub with a bouncer,” he said.
As the final minutes of the third quarter wound down, some GPD officers returned to their posts at the intersections to direct postgame traffic.
At the Gale Lemerand Drive/Southwest Archer Road intersection, Tobias, Valdes and Officer Trent Bowman set up barricades, turning Gale Lemerand into a one-way road.
The officers, wearing bright green vests, directed the cars onto Southwest Archer Road. By 4:30 p.m., the traffic had died down and officers left a much-emptier campus, never forgetting they’d do it all again next week.
“We want a bad guy to be surprised at the extent we go through to make this place safe,” Gainey said.
Contact Chris Alcantara at calcantara@alligator.org and Michael Scott Davidson at mdavidson@alligator.org.
