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Providence Police Worried About Violence at Lil Wayne Concert

PROVIDENCE — The city’s Board of Licenses today required that the Dunkin’ Donuts Center hire a 15- or 16-member police detail for a concert on the night of St. Patrick’s Day by Lil Wayne.


Certain hip-hop and rap performers, given the tough-guy images they cultivate and their association with violence in their personal or professional lives, scare the police. The Police Department in recent years has asked for stringent security precautions for performers the police perceive as problematic.
Lawrence J. Lepore, executive director of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, has accepted the police contingent without complaint. In addition, he expects to have as many as 50 T-shirted security personnel on duty. Generally speaking, a mainstream singer such as Barry Manilow would call for a three-member police detail to handle traffic and 20 security personnel, according to Lepore. But he emphasized that there is no fixed standard.
Whether it is a noncontroversial performer such as Manilow or a performer whose events have been occasionally punctuated by violence, the majority of the security challenge is backstage rather than with the paid crowd, Lepore said. Would-be backstage intruders are a staple of the concert scene, he said.
Lepore said 5,234 tickets have been sold so far, with the average cost of tickets at $79, and that he estimates that about 2,000 more will be sold. It is expected that Lepore will work out the exact size of the police detail with the Police Department when he has a better fix on the number of tickets sold. Lil Wayne headlined a rap and hip-hop concert in May, 2008, and drew a crowd of about 9,000. “There were absolutely no problems that weekend,” Lepore told the board at a meeting at City Hall this afternoon.

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