Police Arrest 20 in Salt Lake City

In the only disturbance to mar an otherwise peaceful Olympic Games, police fired foam-tipped bullets Sunday morning to disperse an unruly crowd angered by the early closure of a downtown beer garden.

Police in riot gear were called in about 1 a.m. after a crowd of several thousand spilled out of the Bud World festival tent onto Main Street. Twenty people were arrested for failure to disperse, and police restored calm in about an hour. There were no injuries and no damage other than one broken window.

Police Chief Rick Dinse said officers were pelted with rocks and bottles during the incident. They moved to clear the street in part because some women caught up in the crowd were being harassed; Dinse said he feared for their safety.

The incident stood in stark contrast to the peaceful family atmosphere that has characterized Salt Lake City during two weeks of Olympic competition. The city’s normally quiet evening streets have been mobbed by tens of thousands of visitors, virtually all of whom have been on their best behavior.

“It’s just amazing that this [disturbance] is all that has happened with the crowds we’ve had every night,” Mayor Rocky Anderson said.

The 2002 Games have spent $300 million for security and have been guarded by 15,000 security workers, including 600 volunteer law enforcement officers from 48 states who paid their own way here. Some have drawn nighttime shifts watching mountain competition venues in temperatures that dropped to 10 degrees below zero.

At Olympic venues, authorities report making only 15 arrests, mostly for drunkenness, possession of drugs or climbing fences to avoid admission gates. In Salt Lake City, there had been a handful of arrests, including those of four homeless people and a couple of demonstrators. The warehouse police rented to process detainees has been the quietest place in town.

In a city never known as a party town, police officers generally have shown tolerance when someone crossed the line. People on the streets with open cans of beer were told to empty the containers, rather than being cited, and one anti-abortion protester said his bust “was the most pleasant arrest experience I’ve had in over 50 arrests.”

“When you look at the thousands of people who have been in Salt Lake over the past 17 days and all the potential for problems, things have gone remarkably well in terms of security,” said Bill Rathburn, a 27-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who was in charge of police planning for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and is attending his 10th Olympics while in Salt Lake City as a security consultant.

“One of the things about the Olympic Games is that they attract very nice people. That makes them easy to police,” Rathburn said. “So I was a little surprised by the incident Sunday. But I suspect you’ll find a lot of local people were involved.”