| Salt Lake City |
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| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
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| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
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| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
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| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
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| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
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| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
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| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
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| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
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| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
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| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
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Scalpers striking gold in S.L.
Security guards lack clout to halt the ticket sales
Correction published Feb. 12, 2002: Salt Lake police are patrolling the downtown ticket exchange area. A story in Sunday's paper about the ticket sellers may have left the impression no enforcement is occurring there.
By Brady Snyder
Deseret News staff writer
Salt Lake's Olympic organizers thought they had the perfect solution to a problem they knew would accompany the 2002 Winter Games — ticket scalping.
That solution, however, is now giving Salt Lake City Olympic planner John Sittner a huge headache.
Sittner was at the Ticket Exchange Saturday trying to gain a handle on a situation that ran amok Friday and Saturday.
The exchange, 200 South and Main Street, was created to provide a controlled — and legal — environment for the ticket scalping planners knew would accompany the Games.
While legal in Utah, scalping that turns into a for-profit business must be licensed.
For instance, individuals can sell their own seats to an event, even for profit, and do so without a license. But people who buy up large numbers of tickets they never intend to use so they can resell them — that action needs licensing.
While illegal, several dozen such scalpers continue to hawk tickets outside the exchange without licenses.
"If you conduct business, you have to have a license," Sittner said. "If you're selling your own ticket, that's not against the law, but if you're conducting business, that's illegal."
Saturday afternoon Sittner warned of a crackdown.
"Our policy is that tickets will be confiscated and citations will be issued," he said.
But scalpers seemed to take little heed of Sittner's words, even at the risk of having their inventory confiscated.
The problem is that the scalping is being regulated by rent-a-cops, not actual police officers.
The rented security guards, hired by the city's business licensing department, are charged with issuing the citations and confiscating tickets. But those temporary cops say the scalpers pay them little mind.
"They just walk away," Jayson Cooper, one of the security guards, told Sittner.
Without the authority to arrest, the security guards have little clout with scalpers. "Without law-enforcement backup, this is what happens," Cooper said.
Indeed, the unlicensed scalpers seemed to be buying and selling at will, without threat of actual law enforcement, who are busy taking care of Olympic security.
"The authorities have better things to worry about, don't they?" said a Brenden, an English scalper who declined to give his first name.
Still, some wondered if the end of the scalping bizarre wasn't in sight.
"I'm very surprised that we haven't been hassled by the authorities yet," scalper Terry Peters said. "I think we're going to start being hassled in the next couple of days."
Sgt. Fred Louis, spokesman for the Salt Lake City Police Department said scalpers could rest easy.
"We have not assigned any officers to that detail. It was our understanding that Sittner and the business licensing people were taking care of that," Louis said. "Everybody's stretched to the limit. Our officers are assigned to other duties."
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com
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February 10, 2002
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