Violence following a professional sports championship is nothing new in America. Four people were killed, including three children, when a crazed driver mowed down fans celebrating the Detroit Pistons’ NBA championship victory in 1990. The city also experienced massive looting and car fires.
Chicago’s first three NBA championships in 1991, 1992, and 1993 resulted in 1,000 arrests and $10 million dollars damage. With looting, fires, and mayhem taking place across the city, there was also random gunfire resulting in at least one death.
But far and away, the championship city for rioting after sports championships is Denver. On four previous occasions, Denver has gone wild when one of their sports teams won a championship: 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001.
The Mile High city’s worst ever riot happened after NFL team Broncos won their first Super Bowl in January 1998, when over 10,000 fans went on a rampage.
Drunken fans overturned cars, looted and vandalised buildings in the city. Damages ran into millions of dollars. A year later after another victory 1,000 Broncos fans rioted in a smaller scale disturbance.
Last night, the city’s NBA franchise, the Nuggets, claimed its first NBA title. About three hours after the final buzzer, someone opened fire about a mile from the arena, injuring nine people, three critically. The perpetrator was also shot and taken into custody by police.
“As far as what led up to this altercation that resulted in the shots being fired, that’s still under investigation at this time,” police spokesperson Doug Schepman said. “It did occur in the area where we had the largest gathering of folks celebrating during the night.”
Fights broke out and multiple shots were fired after an altercation involving several people near 20th and Market around 12:30 a.m., Schepman said. Police investigators on Tuesday were trying to determine who shot the suspect as part of a “complex investigation.”
Thousands of people were still in the area around Market and 20th, though crowd numbers had begun to decrease when the altercation broke out.
“I thought it was safe when I went out last night. We had all that armory that was out there, all the police officers, basically like a military guard,” downtown resident Scott Dangelo, 55, said in an interview Tuesday morning.
The Washington Post took a stab at trying to understand post-championship violence.
Psychologists and sociologists have studied the phenomenon of sports fan violence and have found some interesting answers. Researchers attribute violent behavior to a heady mixture of factors: intense fan identification with a team, behavioral changes when people become part of a mob, and strong psychological and physiological responses when your team wins or loses.
Sports fan violence occurs all over the world, but the American fan is unusual in a few ways. Unlike European soccer hooliganism, in which fans of opposing teams often hurt each other, fan rioting in the United States is usually limited to vandalism or violence directed at inanimate objects, notes Jerry Lewis, a Kent State University sociologist who has spent decades studying fan violence.
There’s also the urban gang factor that may or may not have been at work in Denver. But the police report indicates that the shooting involved “several people” exchanging fire. That information strongly suggests gang violence — especially because of the indiscriminate nature of the shootings.
Cities go to great lengths to keep violence at a minimum following a sports championship. But the cops can’t be everywhere at once, and the rioters usually manage to find an unpatrolled area to loot and set fire to.
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