TMZ has gotten all up in the grill of this year’s Comic-Con, checking out police reports during the con and finding a variety of misdeeds:
According to the report … one person was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, 5 got citations, and 12 other incidents triggered ongoing criminal investigations … and we’re told all were related to activity in and around Comic-Con.
There were three cases of assault with a deadly weapon, several thefts and some driving citations, including driving over the median. And some vandalism.
Honestly…..not very much considering there were about 200,000 people in the environs of downtown San Diego. Clearly TMZ was hoping to find some sordid, juicy crime wave, but Comic-Con is for fun, and given the amount of alcohol and other mood altering substances that flow at the con – and the long, hot lines – what this report suggest to me is that it’s a fairly orderly bunch. Security and the safety of attendees is literally the biggest concern for the show organizers, and San Diego city officials also come out in huge numbers to maintain order.
And they are always tinkering with things. A new regulation by the San Diego Coastal Commission meant that overnight Hall H campers couldn’t line up on the walkway by the bay. (This was mentioned in the Talkback panel.) Thus the classic sight of people sleeping (or more likely, trying to sleep) in makeshift camps along the marina was missing this year…and I guess gone forever.
Of course, with that many people coming to one place, the circle of life will come into play. There have been births at Comic-Con – and over the years, several deaths. In my many decades of attendance I have personally witnessed a couple of street fights, and incidents of pro on pro scuffles have provided lively BarCon fodder as well (no names).
Perhaps the most celebrated violent incident at SDCC was the Hall H Stabbing of 2010. Stabbing sounds bad enough but this somehow was the kind of thing that only could happen at Comic-Con: someone poked someone else near the eye with a pen over a seat for the Marvel screening. A contemporary report:
Hall H was set to feature the stars of upcoming movies Paul and Cowboys & Aliens next, followed by a Marvel Studios panel on Captain America and Thor, which one attendee may have wanted to see a little too much. On the scene, Sergeant Gary Mondesir of the San Diego Police Department told CBR: “Basically, inside of Hall H during Comic-Con, prior to one of the showings, two males got into a dispute. One male attacked the other male, stabbing him on the side of his eye with a pen.”
The pen stabber was detained before he could do any more damage. He reportedly became angered when he told the victim to leave his seat and the victim wanted to stay for the next panel. There is no word on if the pen was just a Bic or one of those really fancy ones with a boat that goes back and forth as you tilt it.
Security this year acted as if they were freshly recruited from a Trump Hitler Youth Brigade. I’ve never seen such a group of entitled brats drowning a muddy puddle of power abuse.
I witnessed a father and his daughter get yanked from a door entrance because they didn’t proceed in a orderly fashion to scan in their badges the way security wanted them to. It was just so abhorrent to witness such a display of degradation.
The constant yelling by these punks to walk on this side or that side of the aisle and ‘one person on a escalator step’ let alone WAITING ON LINE to use a escalator made me felt that perhaps I was attending a ‘military reform school’ orientation rather than a comic book convention.
Maybe I should check out Comic Fest next year just for lack of security interference and piece of mind. Besides, I believe it’s taking place on my old stomping grounds of North San Diego County.
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Coat
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