Police: Howl had fewer people, problems

Limiting ticket sales solely to USU students greatly decreased problems at this year’s Howl, Utah State University police officers say. In all, only about 20 citations were handed out, all alcohol related.

“Overall, problems were down from years past,” Lt. Steve Milne said. “The atmosphere was different. It wasn’t as chaotic as years past.”

Milne attributed the decrease in problems to the Howl “was rand and the way the tickets were handled. Most of our problems in the past have involved non-USU students.”

“People with no ties to [USU], it seemed they were kind of set on causing as many problems as they could.”

In previous years, Milne said fighting and vandalism have been problems at the annual event, but this year no such problems were reported – only minor in possession and public intoxication citations were handed out.

The number of police officers on duty was also boosted for this year’s events, Milne said. In addition to having all 12 USU officers on duty, 13 officers from Logan helped patrol the event.

Milne said, in his 23 years at USU, Saturday’s Howl was the featured the highest number of officers on duty.

Following the event, he said no other problems were reported on Campus.

“[After the Howl] it spreads out into the streets,” he said. “Logan city has a special alcohol enforcement team just because of the sheer volume of people up in this area. But I know, following the event, we didn’t have any problems on campus.”

Milne also lauded the efforts of the event’s staff.

“The Howl staff themselves did a great job of monitoring their own event,” he said. “It was good. Overall, it went off well and it was a good event from our point of view. Not a lot of problems.”

-acf@cc.usu.edu