There were more arrests this year at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, according to the Scottsdale Police Department. Police released the numbers associated with calls for service, arrests, ejections and trespassing associated with tournament events.
The numbers show an increase compared to previous years, including 63 arrests and over a thousand calls for service being made.
Scottsdale police say adjustments made for this year’s tournament include the addition of a third entrance at Hayden Road and the widening of walking paths.
Sgt. Allison Sempsis explains the higher numbers.
“So the calls for service that you're seeing people are asking the same question. 'Why are they significantly higher?' That is us being proactive going out there and you know, making, checking on people doing medical calls or people calling 911 traffic stops, etc.," she said.
For this year’s edition, the department says it identified and addressed “behavior that both fell outside an appropriate level of conduct for the event and outside the law.”
“So our concerted effort was we were looking at the code of conduct that they have every year on the tickets, but this year we were making sure that everyone was following it," Sempsis says.
She says the number of arrests is a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended this year’s tournament.
