Crime over the CyHawk game weekend was surprisingly low according to Ames and ISU police.

“It was relatively smooth and not atypical from many other weekends,” said Jerry Stewart, director of the Department of Public Safety for Iowa State.

ISU Police Department filed only 62 charges Stewart believes to be related to the football game. Comparatively, the Ames Police Department made only 47 arrests, meaning the number of charges would be even fewer.

A majority of charges and arrests were alcohol-related.

Both Ames and ISU police departments prepared for the influx of visitors. Geoff Huff, investigations commander for Ames Police, said the department prepared for a “mini-Veishea,” having more patrol teams on foot and bicycles.

“Other than Veishea, this is probably our biggest weekend,” Huff said. “I don’t think this is anything out of what we expected. We expected it to be busy. We expected this many people in town. I don’t think it surprised us at all.”

Lt. Darin Van Ryswyk, of ISU Police, said the differences between crime during Veishea and crime during the football season come from the different atmospheres.

“Football [season is when] most people look at it as a game that they want to attend,” Van Ryswyk said. “For Veishea, the improper view is that many people come in strictly for the purpose of going to parties and drinking.”

Stewart also said that for instances like Veishea and the Cy-Hawk game when many students from other universities come to town, he has found that about half of all people arrested were not ISU students.

However, the fact many students here this weekend were from the University of Iowa, known for its reputation as a top party school, did not necessarily affect the number of arrests and charges issued over the weekend.

“I don’t know that it has anything to do with the labeling of a ‘party school,’” Van Ryswyk said. 

Huff and Van Ryswyk said crime in Ames during the weekend might have been predicted to be higher simply because of the fact there were so many visitors to the area.

“I think the biggest difference is the sheer number of people here for the Iowa game. When you play an opponent like Texas, they don’t travel like Iowa and UNI,” Huff said. “When there are more people, there are more arrests.”

Huff and Stewart stressed that crime during the weekend was low compared to years past and even compared to other football games in the season.

“Most fans were very respectful. Considering we had 70,000 or 80,000 fans around the stadium, things went pretty well,” Huff said. “If we didn’t arrest anybody we’d be happy with that too, but that’s just not the reality.”