Ask any Ames police officer, Department of Public Safety official or Veishea security officer what numbers scare them.

Is it the thousands of possible underage drinkers this weekend or the tens of thousands of potentially rowdy, drunken party-goers and their unruly friends? Or maybe it’s the thousands of KISS fans who may decide to mingle with the Veishea crowd?

The answer would be none of the above. The numbers that security personnel fear the most are ’88 and ’92 — the years of the Veishea riots.

Although police and security officials don’t like to talk about the past riots, they don’t deny that the past is on their minds.

“Those past incidents are on our minds every year,” said Dennis Ballantine, Ames Police Chief.

DPS director Loras Jaeger agrees with Ballantine in his concern for dangerous disturbances.

“I am always concerned about some disturbance that could possibly spell the end for Veishea,” he said.

After the 1992 riots, many strides were made to help prevent any riots in the future.

Ballantine gives a lot of the credit to the Veishea committees for taking it upon themselves to help prevent events — like the one in 1992 —from happening again.

“After 1992, the Veishea committee recognized that the possibility of riots was their problem to help solve. Peer Security has worked well to do this,” he said.

Ames police, along with help from DPS, have helped to train peer security officers, as well as work all year long with other students to help prevent any reoccurrences.

“I am very satisfied with the effects of having a peer security force. They worked well during the last Veishea and the recent Big 8 Conference on Black Student Government,” Jaeger said. “They have made great strides in ensuring a safe Veishea.”

“We can’t prevent anything if the students don’t help us,” Ballantine said.

Jaeger said he is more concerned with the conduct and misconduct of non-students than he is about the actions of Iowa State students.

“Chief Ballantine and I have noticed that in recent years we are charging more and more non-students than we are students during Veishea,” he said.

Some Campustown businesses aren’t as worried about riots as the police might be. Tom Zmolek, owner of People’s Bar and Grill and The Keg Shop, said the city and the Veishea committee have taken many more precautions to prevent any incidents since the riots in 1992.

“I think the whole Taste of Veishea has eliminated many people’s thoughts about rioting,” he said. “I would say that my concern for riots is none.”

Zmolek said a lot of the problem with riots in the past came from police breaking up parties of mass amounts of people.

“Sometimes the police would break up parties that weren’t really out of hand, which would piss a lot of people off, and some things would happen that would cause a riot,” he said.

Zmolek also said in the past heavier drinking at parties has definitely contributed to making conditions more open for a riot.

“In the previous years you would see people throwing parties and going through 50-60 kegs, now we see people going through about 20-30 kegs for their parties,” he said.

Police plan to be out in party patrols and patrol full force throughout Campustown. Once again, they have positioned their Veishea command post at Fire Station 2 on Welch Avenue.

This year there is a plan in action to help the members of the media stay in touch with the happenings on Welch Avenue and take some strain off the police communications center.

However, because noise levels from past years have made it virtually impossible to conduct radio communications, the command post will conduct its communications this year by cellular telephone.

In a press release from Chief Dennis Ballantine, the use of the cellular communications is also an effort by police to improve accessibility to the media.

“This [cellular phone] should prove more productive than attempting to coordinate statistical questions and requests for interviews through our already overworked communications center,” Ballantine said.

Ballantine also said with a direct line to the Veishea command post, the general public can have more accessibility to police headquarters for other calls.