After a Vikings home game last month, Ken Waldron of Burnsville saw a police escort leading what he figured were buses carrying the visiting team down Hiawatha Avenue toward the airport. Waldron asked Whistleblower whether local taxpayers had to pick up the tab. My colleague, online reporter Tim Harlow, got to the bottom of it and has this report:

When police escorted buses carrying members of the Philadelphia Eagles down Hiawatha Avenue Sunday after their playoff win at the Metrodome, it wasn’t so much to protect the visitors from a mob of upset and angry Vikings fans, but mostly due to a requirement from the National Football League and Transportation Security Administration.

Though seeing a small fleet of squad cars guiding bus loads of highly-paid players and team execs naturally would raise the eyebrows of the citizenry, it’s all legit, said Lt. Rob Goodsell of the Minneapolis Park Police.

Teams that come to Minneapolis to play the Vikings are required to contract with a police agency and foot the bill for a security escort to the airport. The Minneapolis Park Police have been providing that service since 2001, Goodsell said.

At the end of each Vikings game, opposing players line up in a secure area of the Metrodome tunnel, where they are screened by members of the TSA. The players immediately board buses and taken to their aircraft. The screening procedures are required by the TSA, Goodsell said.

“Occasionally, Vikings fans will throw a snowball at the buses, but our job really is to keep the buses together and make sure there is no outside interference,” Goodsell said.

All gas, and wear and tear on police vehicles are fully covered, he said.

“They got nothing on the taxpayer,” Goodsell said. “They reimburse the police department very well. It certainly is not an enterprise, but they pay far more than for what they get.”

Officers who do the driving are not on the clock, but rather on their own time. Goodsell said the gig is similar to security that the Vikings hire to patrol the field and the stadium during the team’s games and that visiting teams hire to provide protection at their hotel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Government spends your money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.