Our Robyn Norwood, a veteran sports writer, has a piece in USA Today looking at the repercussions from the savage beating of a San Francisco Giants fan after a recent game at Dodger Statium in Los Angeles. From her story:
Dodgers fans and supporters of other teams who have ventured to Dodger Stadium wearing a rival's cap or shirt have traded stories of incivility for years. A woman tells of her 7-year-old being hassled by an inebriated fan because the child was wearing Giants gear. (The mother was wearing a Dodgers cap.) Another says she was cursed out while 81/2 months pregnant for wearing a Chicago Cubs jersey.
But the attack on Stow has roused public and political sentiment in a way that neither a shooting death in the Dodger Stadium parking lot in 2003 nor a death after a fight in the stands at Angel Stadium in neighboring Anaheim in 2009 did.
Despite a downward trend in crime across the city, roughly half of all serious crimes in the neighborhood occur on stadium grounds. According to the LAPD, there were 21 serious crimes — which includes rape, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery and burglary — at Dodger Stadium in 2010, down from 32 in 2009.
"I think the fact that it was unprovoked, that it was so senseless, that it was so brutal," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says. "That they hit him from behind, kicked him on the ground. It just hit the heartstrings of everybody.
"This really isn't just about one game. This is about a culture that thinks it's OK to attack this way."
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