ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — While the Bills’ season may now be in the past, this year came with new safety concerns outside the stadium that didn’t expire at the end of Sunday night’s game.
The construction site for the Bills’ new stadium in Orchard Park is the center of the teams future but has also been at the center of legal action taken against fans.
On Friday, three individuals faced charges in Orchard Park Town Justice Court for trespassing with the judge handing each 100 hours of community service. Sgt. Jeremy Lehning with the Erie County Sheriff’s Office said those three were among the 10 fans that trespassed on the construction site on Sundays this season.
“It's extremely dangerous, especially after dark,” Lehning said. “You step wrong, and you're probably going to take a fall. It's approximately 30 feet in some areas.
“It's been people cutting through the construction site to try to get to parking spaces. It's been people trespassing into the site and climbing the fence to get pictures.”
Since the site’s groundbreaking in June, it has become an obsession among fans. Videos have blown up on social media and t-shirts are being sold as a part of a movement started by Bills Mafia to “Feed the Pit,” implying that fans jumping into the pit had some correlation to the team’s success in the latter half of the season.
Lehning said the dangerous trespassing has required some of his team to have to be diverted to make arrests or address medical needs of fans. He said now that the season is over, there is still a concern that fans will continue to trespass to take photos, but the Sheriff’s Office will no longer be patrolling the site. Instead, that will be the job of a privaty security team hired by the contracting company.
Until the problem can fully be prevented, Lehning said the community service penalty is a step toward reducing the number of incidents that could occur over the next two seasons of construction before the new stadium opens for good.
“I believe it's a very, very good start,” Lehning said. “What it does is it alerts people to the consequences of their actions. We can sit here and talk to you guys. We can get it out on social media, but it really comes down to people listening to the message and then taking it to heart and actually not trespassing.”