What happened at Comerica Park?

It wasn’t the scene anyone expected at Green Day’s celebratory concert Wednesday night at Detroit’s Comerica Park: Band members were thrown offstage in panic mid-song, leading to a quietly unsettling 10-minute pause in the rock festivities.

The interruption was later explained by Detroit police. An unauthorized drone had been spotted flying over the crowd of more than 30,000 people and Green Day was escorted away in the name of safety. The suspected drone pilot was detained by police and an initial investigation was launched, the DPD said.

So what happened at the Green Day concert? And what shouldn’t have happened?

No drone zone? Where they can and can’t fly after one disrupted a concert in Detroit

Police declined to provide updates on the incident Thursday, referring questions to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has taken over the investigation. The FAA did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, a tweet posted on Green Day’s official X account during Wednesday’s concert was deleted sometime on Thursday. The post apologized for the show’s delay and said: “Stadium security had us leave the stage while they addressed a potential safety issue. DPD quickly resolved the situation and we were able to continue.”

Green Day’s team and Live Nation, the tour’s promoter, did not respond to Detroit Free Press requests for comment.

Steven Adelman, vice president of the national Event Safety Alliance, said drone incidents like the one at Comerica Park are rare, but the potential threat is on the radar of concert security groups like his.

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According to Adelman, there are protocols in place across the industry, including technology that allows security professionals to instantly intercept a drone’s signal when it enters a designated no-fly zone and then direct the drone to a designated safe spot.

That raises the question of what step was skipped on Wednesday evening, he said.

“Drones are generally cool toys,” said Adelman, a Connecticut attorney. “Promoters use them to get nice aerial footage of a crowd that looks like they’re having a good time, and you can see faces lit up by the stage lights.”

But for security teams on the ground, “If there’s an unauthorized drone, that’s pretty obvious,” he said. “It could be carrying cameras, but it could also be carrying other dangerous things — things you don’t want to be dropping out of the sky over a crowded outdoor stadium.”

Former Sgt. Steve Shank oversaw DPD security operations for large downtown gatherings, including events at Comerica Park, for more than a decade. Shank, now two years retired, served in that role amid the rise of radio-controlled consumer drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they’re officially called, which hit the market in 2010.

While drones are primarily used by innocent hobbyists, a drone in the hands of a bad guy can pose several potential dangers, Shank said.

He called the Green Day incident “very alarming” and “a total blunder.” The former sergeant said that ideally, security and law enforcement at the concert would have spotted the drone before it entered the stadium.

“We were always told, especially at large-scale events, that if the command center saw an (unauthorized) drone overhead, we had to press the button, interrupt the frequency and crash the drone before it got over the crowd,” Shank said.

Drone use is generally permitted in downtown Detroit. But for airspace over large crowds, flights must be approved through a variety of channels, including the FAA, which has a regional headquarters at Detroit Metro Airport.

Such requests are often filed by event producers and performers hoping to capture video footage for everything from documentaries to promotional materials. After approval of a flight plan and a licensed operator, on-site agents and security personnel are alerted to exactly when and where to expect a drone.

That’s why it’s not uncommon to see drones flying overhead at festivals, parades, sporting events, and other busy places in Detroit, and you can assume that’s where they belong.

Shank said that at every major event there is a command center, which is typically stocked with live camera feeds of the surrounding area and constantly monitored by security personnel.

“There are always eyes on the ground,” he said.

Drone use is ultimately regulated by the FAA, and many large or safety-sensitive events impose temporary flight restrictions through the agency. Those events sometimes employ geofencing technology, which uses GPS to create an invisible wall that will — in theory — stop a drone in flight. It’s unclear whether such a system was in operation at Comerica Park on Wednesday.

Despite precautions, drones still sometimes get through, such as in 2019 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, when two people were arrested for flying a UAV over a University of Michigan football game. The two were charged with misdemeanor violations of the ordinance for petty offenses and FAA violations.

Shank recounted an incident several years ago in Campus Martius Park, where thousands of people had gathered for the Detroit tree lighting ceremony. Officers spotted an unidentified drone hovering overhead, and just as they had pinpointed the amateur pilot on Monroe Street, he accidentally flew his drone into the Compuware Building.

The heavy drone crashed from hundreds of feet, Shank said, landing near a group of people, including children, sitting on the patio of the Hard Rock Cafe. No one was injured, but the drone operator was arrested and charged.

“People have the right to fly these things, but the FAA has rules about when and how you can fly them,” Shank said.

The man suspected of flying the drone over Wednesday’s concert was likely tracked down by police at the Comerica Park command center, Shank said.

“I’m sure once the drone was spotted, they were looking through cameras around the city center,” he said. “Once you see someone with their hands on some switches, you can identify them quickly.”

Adelman, the concert safety advocate, was not surprised that Green Day was abruptly removed from the stage.

“That’s what the band manager and tour security do instinctively,” he said. “They don’t wait for permission from anybody. They see a threat and protect their band. That’s their job.”

But he was impressed that the band was back on stage just 10 minutes later, indicating the group was given the green light “very quickly” for a potential security threat.

“On the spectrum of threats, an unauthorized drone is potentially very dangerous,” Adelman said. “But it’s not a terribly difficult threat to mitigate because if the public safety team has the technology, it’s not a dangerous process for them to intercept the signal. And it’s a fairly quick process to get the drone safely back to the ground.”

Contact Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press music writer: 313-223-4450 or [email protected].