Levi's Stadium Guards Demanding Wallets

It’s an understatement to say a story in Ars Technica misses the point. The lede:

WTF! Nothing more is said about the guards demanding to open and examine fans’ wallets. Who cares about tracking a bunch of multi-millionaire cement heads as they bash each others’ brains in on the field? I want to know about the guards demanding fans’ wallets.

No search engine comes up with anything, except the same story in Ars Technica, including Google, StartPage, Ixquick, DuckDuckGo and Dogpile.

Anyone know more about this?

Private guards on private property? Yeah, they can do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don’t keep the wallets, take anything from the wallets, or add anything to the wallets, AFAIK.

Our wallets were checked at work (warehouse/shipping center) every time we left the floor; even just for breaks. That has ended for a while but we have been told to expect it once again once the seasonals arrive and the holiday rush starts. But to do this at a stadium? I would think the slow down in moving people wouldn’t be worth it.

guard: “OK, kopek, now we’re retired and it doesn’t matter any more, what were you stealing all those years?”

kopek: “Wallets.”

I guess I’m just naive. What are they looking for in your wallet?

In a workplace, I could see it, since you’re concerned that people are stealing stuff. (Although what can you steal in a warehouse that you could fit in your wallet?) But, and assuming that this story is real, why check the wallets of people walking into the stadium before a sporting event? What could they possibly be looking for?

ISIS membership cards?

If it’s the unused Trojan from 1985, they can have it.

Razor blades, credit card knives,, etc. Give people half a chance and they’ll create all sorts of ingenious weapons.

And you are probably thinking of men’s wallets. You can fit a lot into some women’s wallets.

Yeah but, anything you can could possibly hide in your wallet you could just as easily be hidden elsewhere on your person. Seems like an entirely useless gesture.

Demonstration video:
CardSharp Credit Card Knife.

Are knifings at sporting events even a thing?

Well, it is a concern when the Jets play the Sharks, I guess.

My father used to work at 17th and Spring Garden in Philadelphia across the street from the Mint. He got to know a few of the employees who ate lunch at the same place he did. Not only did they examine their wallets on the way in and out, but they were forbidden to bring any coins in (the mint did not print bills, only made coins). Still one guy managed to steal–until he was caught. He would throw quarters out the windows onto the grounds and come back and night and search for them.

I can imagine that he wouldn’t find them all and the guards noticed some eventually and set a trap, but I don’t actually know how he was caught.

Right to their last dying day.

Brazil referee decapitated after stabbing player

Man arrested in fight, stabbing after football game at LI high school Even though it was after the game, it was inside the stadium.

Germantown H.S. Student Charged with Stabbing af Football Game

Long Island teen stabbed 19-year-old during high school football game: cops

Yes, but we’re talking about an NFL stadium in Silicon Valley. The only people who can afford seats are yuppies, who are not known for their violent tendencies.

BTW, by “checking inside NFL fans’ wallets”, do they mean someone is actually looking in wallets, or just that the wallets are being scanned by the x-ray machines as is done at the airport or the courthouse? Because the former in intrusive while people are used to the latter.

[Quote=Hari Seldon]
My father used to work at 17th and Spring Garden in Philadelphia across the street from the Mint. He got to know a few of the employees who ate lunch at the same place he did. Not only did they examine their wallets on the way in and out, but they were forbidden to bring any coins in (the mint did not print bills, only made coins). Still one guy managed to steal–until he was caught. He would throw quarters out the windows onto the grounds and come back and night and search for them.
I can imagine that he wouldn’t find them all and the guards noticed some eventually and set a trap, but I don’t actually know how he was caught.
[/Quote]

By now he could smuggle in the parts for a drone, assemble it in his lunch-break, add some loot, set it by a window, and leave it to an accomplice to control from a distance…
Hopefully the guards would have no shotguns to keep their flock in check.

Yeah, three events at high schools and one from Brazil isn’t great reason to start policing this at NFL games.