Home field disadvantage | Oct. 3, 2007

A man was arrested and booked into Pima County Jail for multiple violations at Arizona Stadium, 540 N. Vine Ave., at 1:50 a.m. Saturday.

Police were dispatched to the stadium on a call that there was a possible fight brewing between a man on the field and a security guard. Police talked to the man, whose speech was slurred and mumbly. An officer asked the man to sit down on the ground, but the man refused, so the officer guided him to the ground.

Before officers questioned the man, he admitted to running up and down the field with some friends but said they did not mean to do any harm. Police asked the man for his driver’s license, and he said that he didn’t have it. When officers asked if he had anything to drink, the man told them that he did not drink anything. He blew into the officer’s face, and the officer immediately detected the odor of intoxicants.

The officer asked the man what state his driver’s license came from, and he said that it was from Washington. The man then pulled the license out of his pocket and gave it to the officer.

The man said that he had been at a Delta Delta Delta fundraising event and that he had been drinking a little bit of alcohol. He said the he knew the legal drinking age was 21 in Arizona but that he was allowed to have alcohol in his body because he was Jewish and celebrating Shabbat.

The man said that his friends jumped a stadium fence and decided to run away from the building. The officer asked the man about a knocked-over Dippin’ Dots cart and a banner that had been torn on the south side of the stands. The man denied being involved with the damage of the items. “It was probably one of those guys,” he said.

The officer arrested the man for criminal damage, criminal trespass and for being a minor with spirituous liquor in his body. While searching the man, officers found three pieces of tubing shaped like cups in his pocket. The tubing contained remnants of brown liquid, and the man said that it was beer.

During the investigation, three phone calls were made to the man’s phone. The officer noticed three different names appeared on the caller ID. The officer asked the University of Arizona Police Department dispatcher to check the names for possible matching contacts on facebook.com. The dispatcher found two possible matches and added the contacts to the fact sheet for the case.