Is The Issue Of Fan Safety The Real Issue?

By Dan Turner

"Fan safety," it has been an ongoing thread of discussion on the Vinny & Rob show on 105.7 for weeks now. It is a very hard conversation for me to listen to and trying to inject myself into in it more than I did would have been both foolish and pointless on my part. I will, however, try to voice my opinion here.

For starters, I do not feel I have spent enough time in Baltimore to comment on how safe it is or isn't. I have been a resident of Baltimore County for going on nine years now and many of the people who work for the station, listen to the station and participate with the station, have lived here for many many more. I also am not active enough in the community to warrant my voice holding any type of weight in this discussion. Which brings me to my first point...

We received a litany of callers this week that attributed the lack of attendance at Oriole Park at Camden Yard to the fear of more civil unrest. I have no problem with that. There were also callers who said they did not attend games because of the fear of general crime, both violent and non-violent. Again, no problem with that. All but one of these callers, if my memory serves, mentioned nothing about serving  the community that they called in to unabashedly call "violent" and "dangerous." This is what I have a problem with.

As I said, I am not as active in the community as I feel I could (or, more importantly, should be), but I am not going to bash the place in which I live. ESPECIALLY publicly. If you are not willing to fully participate in trying to make your home better, you have absolutely no right to complain. If all you do is call a radio station to say, "this place is a dump and I'd never take my kids there," but you have no solution or just saying, "this place is a dump and I'd never take my kids there" is all you're willing to put in... YOU are just as much a part of the problem as the people who are breaking the law.

Back to the safety thing, I said I didn't have a problem with it. That's not completely true. To want to go through your entire life without encountering any danger or risk is admirable, but egregiously ridiculous. Just by stepping out of your house or apartment every morning, you are putting yourself at risk of being struck by lightning or a car or (God forbid) maybe even some enlightenment. But do you hole up in your home, sequestering yourself from all the dangers of the world? No. You step out there, get in your car or get on the bus or ride the Light Rail and go to work.

Now, does living in an urban metropolis like Baltimore put you at increased odds of something bad happening to you? Yes. But the same can be said for Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans and every other major city up and down every coast and every Interstate. If you are so afraid of the "violence" and "danger" the city poses move to a place like Montana or Vermont. But, hey guess what? In places like Montana and Vermont you have to worry about the possibility of getting eaten by wolves or bears! There is inherent danger around every corner. Trying to avoid all of it is like trying to dodge rain drops. You might make one miss, but you're still gonna get wet. So to say the reason you avoid going to OPACY is because you fear being victimized is, at best, misguided.

Now, to the underlying (and sometimes out in the open) theme most of these "fan safety" calls shared: race and racism. The most troublesome thing I noticed taking, listening to and participating in all of these phone calls was what I talked about earlier. Many were quick to call and complain about the danger. Many were quick to call and rebut and say that using the "fan safety" card was an excuse. Some were able to veil their ignorance and some could not. The thing that stuck out most to me is that there was no middle ground. Not a single caller could see the issue from the other side of the argument. Nor did it seem like they even remotely wanted to.

I will not pretend like I have the answers to solving the disparities between the different races and classes that call this city home, but I will say that in my 31 years of existence I have never experienced anything like what I have experienced in the last year. From Freddie Gray to Philando Castile, from the Orlando nightclub massacre to the Dallas Police ambush, violence and especially, racially and culturally charged violence, is becoming something we are forced to witness much too often. Our system is broken. Our people are still divided.

This "fan safety" issue, and everything that came with it, made that very clear to me. And unless we can all step out of our bubbles of ignorance and, together, start the process of rehabilitating our communities… nothing will ever change.