It Was 1st Down, Jail to Go on Raiders’ Tickets ‘Sack’

Dave Krieg and Tom Atkin could commiserate with each other on Monday. They were both sacked by relentless forces beyond their control.

Krieg is the Seattle Seahawks quarterback who was decked four times on Sunday by the tenacious Los Angeles Raiders’ defense as the pro football team trounced the Seahawks before a giant crowd at the Coliseum.

Atkin, a Tarzana marketing consultant, was blitzed by two of the city’s finest before he could even get inside the stadium to watch the Raiders clinch a National Football League divisional title.

The 38-year-old Atkin found out, to his embarrassment, that if you have a few extra tickets to a sporting event in Los Angeles, you had better not try to peddle them--even at face value, much less a discount.

It’s called scalping.

Under state law, scalping penalties are only triggered when an individual attempts to sell entertainment event tickets “in excess” of the ticket price.

However, Los Angeles’ more restrictive law, on the books since 1961 and which takes precedence over the state law, prohibits attempts “to sell or resell any ticket of admission to a place of public assemblage.” An exception is made for ticket brokers.

In short, no entertainment ticket can be resold, at any price, in a Los Angeles public place by private individuals.

Atkin, a Raiders season ticket holder, learned this civics lesson the hard way.

While some of his biggest corporate clients looked on in disbelief, he was handcuffed outside a Coliseum gate and hauled off to a nearby holding area, while his colleagues chanted like a Greek chorus, “We’re all business people” and “He’s not a crook.”

As a seething Atkin recounted in a telephone interview Monday, the Raiders-Seahawks game was to provide him with a big public relations opportunity. He had rented a 35-foot motor home and parked it Sunday morning near the Coliseum.

He had drinks and a smorgasbord laid out for about 40 clients, including representatives from such blue chip companies as American Airlines; Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. and Miller Brewing Co.

Face Value

Some of his guests already had their game tickets. However, Atkin had purchased 18 ducats on the 20-yard line for those who didn’t from a broker for $38.50 each, $16.50 over their face value.

As game time approached, Atkin noticed that nine guests hadn’t shown up. So, in his words:

“A bunch of us wandered to Tunnel No. 4, where people come to buy and sell tickets. I shouted, ‘I am not a scalper. We have extra tickets on the 20-yard-line. We want no more than face value or less. Does anybody want a ticket?’ ”

As Atkin, dressed in a black Raider T-shirt and blue jeans, waved the nine tickets, a plainclothes Los Angeles police officer, who had been standing next to him suddenly flashed a badge, saying, “You’re under arrest,” Atkin recalled. The officer handcuffed him and, with his plainclothes partner, began leading him away.

“I tried to explain,” said Dave Smith, a regional merchandiser for Miller Brewing, who was among Atkin’s stunned colleagues. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

Smith said one of the officers remarked: “‘He looks like a scalper; you can’t judge a book by its cover.”’

Taken to Station

Smith followed his host to the Police Department’s Coliseum station, where Atkin was held for an hour with a handful of others arrested for scalping. He was then taken to the nearby Southwest Division station, where he was photographed, fingerprinted and booked.

Alice Hand, a supervisor at the city attorney’s office, said there usually are no more than “six to eight” scalping arrests for a football game at the Coliseum. And, she added, “It’s not one of our pressing priorities to prosecute.”

If convicted, however, the misdemeanor penalty is six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

Hand said the arresting officers “could have” shown discretion, but added that they “are charged with strictly enforcing the laws.”

Southwest Division Sgt. David Young agreed that “we have discretion” but in Atkin’s case, “the elements of a crime were present.”

A shaken Atkin finally was released at about the time of the final gun and made his way back to the rented motor home.

His day at the game ended, he said Monday, with “a big screwdriver--with a lot of drive in it.”

“I know bad arrests can occur,” he said. “But this. . . .”