91 fans ejected at Packers-Vikings game

GREEN BAY - A record number of fans at Saturday's Packers-Vikings playoff game didn't behave themselves. Police say officers arrested 21 people and ejected 91 others at Lambeau.     

It was an evening playoff game against a division rival on a Saturday where many people didn't have to work the next morning. Police say it was the perfect storm, but add officers handled it pretty well.

In an effort to provide a safe, fun game day experience, Packers officials stopped alcohol sales after halftime. People at the game saw an increased police presence.

Still, Green Bay police said they arrested 21 people. A record for the season. That included 12 people from Wisconsin and seven from Minnesota

Lt. Jody Buth said the 91 ejections is the highest police have ever seen.

"That number we were somewhat prepared for," said Buth.

Buth added more than half were Wisconsin fans. Nearly all offenses were alcohol-related.

"The ejection side of it looks to be one of those where we took a zero tolerance policy, a pro-active policy, right at the gates and that's where a lot of that may have increased," said Buth.

Police said it's too early to say whether the decision to stop serving alcohol early and toughen up security made a difference, and that includes whether fans drank more heavily before they got into Lambeau.

"We're going to get together with the Packers organization, and we will look at the numbers, and look at how things went and do some internal auditing," Buth said.

A Packers spokesperson said team officials are still reviewing the police reports, so they didn't want to comment yet on Saturday's numbers.

So how does the season look overall in terms of arrests and ejections? We did a FOX 11 Fact Check. Police report a total of 97 arrests at home games this season, and 373 ejections. That's an average of 9 arrests per game, and 34 ejections.

The game with the most ejections after Saturday's was the Packers-Bears matchup which saw 55 ejections. Next is the Packers-Lions game in which 50 people were ejected.

Buth said it's possible officers ejected even more than 91 people at the Packers-Vikings game. He explained that's because a high volume of radio traffic limited officers at times from calling in and reporting an incident.

"Just informally talking to officers, they have told me that there were a couple of times during the game where they just couldn't get on the radio, just because of radio traffic, so they handled the ejections themselves," Buth said.

Police point out those who caused problems at Saturday's game equal about a fraction of one percent of the 70,000 plus fans who attended.