NFL, don’t be a soft target: Column

A holiday party for county employees in California. A soccer stadium. A Paris concert hall. The office of a French magazine. A peace demonstration in Ankara, Turkey. A marketplace in Beirut. Nearly 300 people dead — killed at the direction or in support of the Islamic State terrorist group. These were non-combatants, people unrelated to the international war on terror but for the country on their passport. The terrorists who killed them deliberately chose soft targets — places and venues with large crowds at which they had a good chance of penetrating security, avoiding detection and inflicting as much death as possible on as big a stage as possible.

But what if there were people in these venues, there to enjoy the game or the music, who were also off-duty or retired law enforcement officers properly armed and trained and known to the venue’s security forces? Then you could have had an incident more like the attack on a French train that was thwarted by three traveling Americans, two of whom were trained servicemembers, who neutralized the threat before any violence was carried out.

The college bowl game season is about to start, and many of the games will be played in NFL stadiums, which adopted a strict no firearms policy at the beginning of the 2013 season. The ban extends even to off-duty and retired law enforcement officers, including federal agents, who under law are able to carry concealed firearms with them when outside their jurisdictions. This policy creates soft targets for terrorists who now know that tens of thousands of fans, players and NFL personnel will be absolutely helpless if they can get through the gate.

We know from Paris that law enforcement, even when working actively with highly skilled and trained security professionals, cannot be certain that all threats will be detected and neutralized. The NFL regularly employs law enforcement officers to protect teams and the stadiums in which they play, and these officers do not suddenly become a security risk if they attend an NFL game on their day off or after they retire. Quite the opposite. Having fully trained and sworn law enforcement officers, active or retired, improves security and the safety of the fans attending the game. Active and retired law enforcement officers must meet a much higher standard of qualification than your average concealed carry permit-holder. Active officers must keep their firearms training up to date continuously, and federal law requires even retired officers to meet active-duty standards for firearms training annually. These officers, these fans, should be permitted to coordinate with existing security and carry their firearms in these venues.

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The members of the Fraternal Order of Police are not a security risk to their fellow fans, players or NFL employees. The risk is from terrorists who want nothing more than to kill and injure as many as they can before they are killed themselves. While we may do everything we can to keep out the threat, once it is inside, ordinary citizens are incredibly vulnerable because they are unarmed and without the proper training or ability to react in such a situation. State and local FOP lodges in the NFL cities want to work with team owners, venue owners and local businesses to make these events safer and to give all the fans greater peace of mind.

I suspect that many NFL venues and facilities would welcome the presence of off-duty law enforcement officers attending events in their stadiums and would have no objection to them being armed. Although current NFL policy prohibits stadiums from making this decision on their own, the NFL can and should change its policy.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, don’t let your fans be soft targets.

Chuck Canterbury is the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

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