In response to reports such as ours on Friday regarding the Fire cancelling tickets in Section 101 of Toyota Park for Saturday’s home match against New England Revolution due to misbehavior in the previous home match against San Jose, the club sent members of the media letters issuing a final warning to Sector Latino.
The Final Warning was served to Sector Latino on June 2nd cites 14 months of what the club called “multiple incidents involving physical violence” and cites a specific incident on May 20th after the home match in Houston where Sector Latino supports clashed with Houston Dynamo supporters in which a video was shown during the meeting. The letter also stated that Sector Latino would have their designated supporter group privileges revoked through August 1st. The letter was signed by two members of Sector Latino not in leadership roles and Section 8 Chicago board members Dan Giroux and Nicole Hack acknowledging receipt of the letter.
These details were confirmed by Section 8 Chairman Dan Giroux, though Giroux has added that Section 8 has made no official statement as to agreement of the letter at the time.
On June 2nd, a smoke bomb was cited by Major League Soccer’s Stadium Security Administrator during the match against San Jose. Thus, resulting in Sector Latino’s permanent revocation of designated supporter group privileges and the cancelling of all season tickets in Section 101 which the club said was necessitated due to lack of positive identity of the culprits. As stated in Friday’s report, the group has until Wednesday at 5pm CT to file a written appeal. Should this be done, the club would then conduct a hearing with Sector Latino prior to the June 30th home match against NYCFC to review final evidence of the incident.
Mr. Giroux also added this when asked about the club specifically asking about selling tickets at the Harlem End for Saturday’s match.
“The club did ask us if we would like them to end ticket sales for the Harlem End for the match,” said Giroux. “We decided to indeed ask them to cut ticket sales and to also cut ticket sales ourselves until we came to a decision. The decision we came to is one that collective punishment for minor and debatable incidents does not merit this treatment from the club. The ISA’s mission is to represent all fans and the Fire canceled tickets for many people who were not even present for the June 2nd match. After such a dramatic step was taken by the club we felt we were forced to end ticket sales until this is resolved.”
The club has refrained from issuing an official statement on the matter due to this still being an “open situation” since Sector Latino could still appeal the ruling. Section 101 was empty tonight and most of Section 8 Chicago who did not sell tickets in the Harlem End in the North end of Toyota Park and did not partake in activities that Sector Latino were prohibited from doing during Saturday’s match against New England.
THOUGHTS: In light of hearing the club’s side of the story, we feel that if a supporters group has engaged in a pattern of misconduct such as the club has stated it has, then a ban for that particular group is justified. We still believe that punishing the whole of season ticket holders in Section 101 for the actions of a few is harsh and represents an overreach by the club. We also must recognize that there are times where supporters groups must be able to police themselves and take accountability for their actions. It appears that Sector Latino has repeatedly failed to do so.
We have not approved of everything the Fire have done in the past in relation to how it has operated in recent years, and this likely will not be the last time that we will express our disapproval.
Incidents of violence involving supporters groups of opposing teams should not be tolerated and neither should repeated transgressions of the Fan Code of Conduct.
We are still very concerned about the disconnect between the supporters and the Fire. The club needs to do more to bridge that disconnect with its fans when it comes to communication of matters both on and off the pitch while the supporters can hold each other accountable for their behavior while cheering for the Fire at games and not fall back on amplified rants on social media.
The story
on Friday was gathered with the evidence we had at the time and attempts were made to contact Fire staff to get their side and did not receive said response until
Saturday night. It was always the intention that a follow-up story would be posted once the club responded since it is important to get both sides of the story and not just the one that dominates social media.
