Did Officials Exaggerate Crowd Count at Parade?

Imagine San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium filled to capacity and the parking lot jammed with cars. Now imagine five times that number--five times the people, five times the cars. Picture the traffic jam. Picture the lines for the bathrooms.

According to “official estimates” reported by the media, that’s how many people--250,000--lined the 1.5-mile downtown parade route May 18 for the “San Diego Salutes the Troops” parade. Given no alternative, reporters dutifully reported the figure, although some did mention that it seemed, well, a little high.

“Some observers said they thought the crowd was smaller,” the San Diego Union reported the next day.

At events where no ticket sales or seating numbers are available to use as a gauge, a reporter on deadline has only two reasonable alternatives: use the “official” attendance figure supplied by the event organizers or try to make one up, which is hardly more accurate and tends to be embarrassing if the number is dramatically different from the one used by other reporters. There is always a need to quantify the event, to provide viewers or readers with some sort of yardstick to measure its popularity. In many cases, reporters from competing papers huddle together and agree on an attendance number, just so their editors don’t read different numbers in the other papers.

In most cases, though, the only available source for attendance information is the event organizers, who invariably want to portray the event in the most positive light possible. To them, attendance figures carry great weight and are often used to measure an event’s success or failure.

Beyond the unarguable good vibes and patriotic fervor stirred up by the Armed Forces Day parade, the organizers, in particular the mayor’s office, touted it as a success because it drew an impressive 250,000 people. After all, only 200,000 were expected, according to pre-parade estimates.

To anyone who attended the event or endured Channel 8’s somnambulistic television coverage, the attendance figure came as something of a shock. The crowd sure didn’t look like 250,000 people.

The source of that number and the method by which it was calculated provide a glimpse at how these things work. Crowd estimation is not exactly a science.

Basically, in this case, representatives of the mayor’s office got together with the San Diego Police Department and came up with a number. If it sounds like they sat down with a Ouija Board and then decided, “a quarter of a million sure sounds like a nice round number,” well, that’s not so far off.

Police officers looked at the crowd, aided by the view from the SDPD helicopter. According to their observations the crowds were 15 people deep on both sides of the street. The police then used a mathematical formula to arrive at a figure, according to Sgt. Jim Kelley, special events coordinator for the San Diego Police Department. Figuring one person per foot on each side of the street, 15 people deep, for the entire 1.5 mile length of the parade, they came up with a figure of 237,600.

After taking into account that a number of people were watching from the buildings and the “fudge factor,” Kelley said he and mayor’s office spokesman Paul Downey haggled for a bit, “flipped a coin,” weighed various factors, and came up with a number. Voila !

There really is no way of knowing if the figure is accurate, and the parade will undoubtedly go down in history as a stunning success, the biggest parade in San Diego history.

Yet, think how easy it would be to come up with a completely different number. Say, for example, that the average human being takes up two feet instead of one. That cuts the figure in half right there. Now, suppose that instead of 15 people deep, the crowds were, say 12 people deep (even though photographs indicate it was closer to seven or eight people deep in many areas). Suddenly the crowd is a much more reasonable 95,040--still an amazing crowd, albeit far less than the 200,000 the mayor’s office predicted would attend.

With the benefit of hindsight, there is more information available to help measure the true size of the crowd. One approach is to ask a simple question: How did a quarter of million people get downtown? Think back to that image of San Diego Stadium, and what the parking lot looks like when 50,000 people show up.

Event organizers touted the noticeable lack of major traffic jams as further evidence of the parade’s success. People listened to media advisories and used alternative forms of transportations, they said.

According to Sgt. Kelley, about 300 more people than than normal rode AMTRAK trains that morning, and the local buses carried about 3,000 extra people. However, the trolley was packed. According to Judy Leitner, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, about 23,000 more people rode the trolley than on a normal Saturday.

Throw together all the people who took the train, buses and trolley and the number still falls far short of 250,000 people.

Confronted with the numbers from the trolley and buses, Downey said he still didn’t doubt the estimate.

“The Police Department did a fly over and they gave us that estimate,” Downey said. “Judging by what I saw I have no reason to doubt it. The Police Department tends to be conservative with their estimates.”

Sgt. Kelley thinks the crowd estimate was “pretty close.” When told that Downey had said the attendance figure originated from the Police Department, he laughed. “Far be it from me to contradict Paul Downey,” he said.

Despite reports that KFMB made millions of dollars last year, both KFMB radio and television were hit with across the board budget cuts last week. In addition to some behind the scenes personnel, KFMB-TV (Channel 8) laid off reporter Greg Starddard. KFMB-AM (760) lost reporters Cindy Manbeck and Michael Russo. The cuts didn’t come just in personnel. Management also reportedly told KFMB to stop buying bottled water. . . .

Despite the elimination of Starddard, Channel 8 will still have one black reporter--the station has hired Margaret Radford from KGTV (Channel 10). She will be the new weekend anchor, replacing Mitch Duncan, who is moving to the 11 p.m. weekday newscast. Radford, best known at Channel 10 for her almost daily zoo animal stories, fits the new criteria for Channel 8 on-air personnel, in that she is inoffensive (read: bland) and has been in town forever. . . .

KNSD-TV (Channel 39) anchorwoman/reporter Monica Gayle has been a hot topic on the rumor mill, which suggested she may be looking for a better gig. Not true, Gayle said. Her contract with the station was recently renewed and she is happy at the station.