Sitting at a brown rectangular table in a confined conference room in Breslin Center on Sunday, Matt Laskowski enjoys what’s left of a limited smorgasbord of nachos, fried rice and taco salad.

And after only about three minutes, his radio crackles and his facial expression turns from content to somewhat annoyed, but not surprised.

“I’ve never once worked an event that, as soon as I sit down to eat, I don’t get called,” he says. “There’s been times where I’ve actually almost gotten through a meal, but then right when I was eating my brownie, I got called.”

But this is all in a day’s work for Laskowski, who is the production staff director (security) at Breslin.

He oversees the entire 80-person student production staff and supervises events at the venue.

“At an event there will be anywhere from 20 to 40 people working at one time, and I’m in charge of them all,” he says.

And he is on extra alert tonight, as rock band Tool is in the house, and, according to reports from other venues on the band’s tour, the fans are going to be rowdy.

Laskowski says a friend who works at Denver’s Pepsi Center

told him that during the band’s July 21 stop at the venue, there were 73 instances of crime, including fraud and disorderly conduct.

And one Breslin worker who saw the show on Friday night at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo told Laskowski that “there was no way we were going to keep the chairs on the floor, no matter how bolted down they are.”

After a meeting with a head security representative from Tool, Laskowski briefs all of his people about an hour before the doors are slated to open.

Tonight’s precautions include bolted-down seating on the main floor, extra security help and a ejection policy for those who choose to mosh or crowd surf.

“There was a lot of preparation that went into tonight, and I think that really helps,” Laskowski says. “The chairs are bolted down, and they are also tied off together, so even if someone were to rip one of them off, they’d still be bolted to each other.”

And although they are security guards, Breslin officials will not make a move to apprehend someone without the aid of an MSU police officer, Laskowski says.

“There’s a ridiculous amount of security out there,” says assistant supervisor and special education senior Steve Young. “You always plan for the worst, but something seems to surprise me at every event - you just have to adjust.”

Laskowski says Breslin production staff are not uniformed police officers, and therefore they can’t arrest anybody.

“We don’t carry handguns or handcuffs or anything like that,” he says. “So if there’s an instance of flashing, drinking or smoking marijuana, we can’t write a ticket or anything - we never get involved in a situation without a police officer present.”

But Laskowski says there is nothing like the adrenaline rush he gets when he walks out in front of a crowd of 10,000 screaming people. During April’s Campus Invasion 2K2 tour, he says, he had to bust some girls who were flashing the audience.

“Even though I was getting booed, the adrenaline rush was just awesome - being out there in front of everyone with all of their eyes on me,” he says.

Scary situations

As Tool’s opening band, Meshuggah, plays its thrash metal, Laskowski walks down a hallway with his finger pressed against his earpiece.

He picks up speed and within seconds is sprinting up three flights of stairs to reach a bathroom on Breslin’s concourse level.

A man has passed out in the bathroom, and Laskowski’s mission is to make sure the paramedics are taking care of the situation. He arrives to see them readying a gurney just inside the entrance to carry the man out.

“I’ve never had anyone die since I’ve been here,” he says. “That’s something I really pride myself on - and there’s been people who have been close.”

Laskowski says he has had to respond to a heart attack and, recently, a seizure during Cher’s Oct. 12 concert.

“It had never happened before, and I was just kind of shocked about the whole thing,” he says.

Laskowski and an off-duty ambulance driver carried the seizure victim behind the stage, where he was tended to by paramedics.

“At one point I saw him roll his eyes into the back of his head and I saw the whites of his eyes,” he said. “It was a scary situation.”

But Laskowski says one of the most harrowing experiences he has witnessed was during last October’s Fake The Funk 11, when he noticed a fight beginning to break out on the concourse level of Breslin.

“Guys were pushing each other, going back and forth, and all of a sudden one of the guys knocked a trash can over and it sounded like a gunshot,” he says. “I saw 100 people take cover on the floor and all of these police officers started rushing in.

“I ended up escorting one of the guys out, and he had a big gash, like a half moon, on the side of his face.”

Theater sophomore Nicole Lenik, a production staff member who is monitoring the press room hallway during Tool’s show, says that during her first event with the security team, she had a champagne bottle thrown at her.

“I was actually down on the main floor, and it shattered all over me,” she says. “Most of the time I don’t have to deal with that many problems, but today I did deal with someone who got thrown out (because they had a video camera) who wanted to come back in.”

Production staff member and mechanical engineering senior Jeremy Smith says he has worked at other concerts at Breslin, including Cher, Rod Stewart and Barenaked Ladies.

The only big situation he says he was involved in was when a woman jumped up on the middle of the stage while Stewart was kicking autographed soccer balls, a tradition during his performances.

“Some lady jumped up on the island, ran up onstage and grabbed a soccer ball,” Smith says. “I was down on the west side of the pit, and I didn’t even know how she got up there.

Being prepared

During certain events, such as “Sesame Street Live” in April, the focus is more on the safety of children, Laskowski says, whereas during events such as Tool and men’s and women’s basketball games, the focus is more on crowd control.

“We put barricades around the lower bowl seats and it absolutely made a difference,” Laskowski said Monday. “Despite the amount of people down there, 50 people can’t stop 500.

“The more things you can have to deter people from rushing down, the better.”

In the event that a few people begin rushing down, Laskowski said he’ll first give them a warning, calm them down and tell them to enjoy the rest of the show. If they continue to act up, he’ll get the police involved.

“It’s the same thing during basketball games,” he said. “We can keep people off the floor when it’s only 10 people, but when everyone comes out, like after we won the Big Ten title, you can’t stop them.

“Then all we can try to do is make sure no one gets hurt.”

Laskowski said he has also had to deal with finding missing children when they occasionally wander off.

“Sometimes a child will take off around the concourse after Big Bird or something like that, and mom and dad are still trying to buy a T-shirt or cotton candy,” he said.

“We almost had one kid get abducted one time, but with the good communication that we have, we got that taken care of quickly.

“I’ve never had any major, serious incidents happen like that.”

When Breslin hosts larger events, Laskowski said changes are made to ensure safety.

One way Breslin attempts to keep the moshing and crowd surfing to a minimum is by having reserved seating.

“We used to have a general admission floor, but it just caused too many problems,” Laskowski said. “During the Smashing Pumpkins, things really started happening with moshers and then we tried to put seats on the floor without bolting them for Bush in 1996, and people were literally throwing them.

“It was like WWF - it was a madhouse.”

Undercover

A student in a Rage Against The Machine T-shirt, blue zip-up hooded sweatshirt and a beanie approaches Laskowski, who is now in the ticket lobby. The way he walks and presents himself, he fits right in with the rest of the crowd.

“How is it going out there?” Laskowski asks.

“I need to talk to you for a minute,” he says to Laskowski.

The hooded guru is psychology junior Jonathan Fey, who is working undercover to report disorderly conduct and catch people using cameras and smoking marijuana. The cord to his earpiece is stapled to his beanie under the cap, and it’s almost impossible to see.

“Remember that it’s going to be dark in there,” Fey says to Laskowski. “There’s going to be a lot of confusion, make sure I get a good description so I can find these people.”

And with that, Fey ventures back into the crowd.

Laskowski said Monday that although he has a lot of responsibility with his position, he also remembers to have fun as a college student. A May recipient of a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, he plans on taking classes toward a bachelor’s in computer science in the spring.

Laskowski said his plan is to work on the road for a few years, possibly as a security manager for touring bands, but his main goal is to eventually work for the federal government.

“I got a big kick out of working for the secret service when Clinton and Dick Cheney were here,” he said.

Winding down

During Tool’s break between its regular set and encore, Laskowski says “things are starting to wind down.”

What’s left is gathering those with backstage passes into one area, and clearing out the remainder of the seats. Laskowski doesn’t know if the crowd will disperse peacefully or if there will be any dangerous situations.

But 30 minutes later, Breslin is virtually emptied of its roughly 6,000 patrons.

The final tallies of the night? Two instances of ticket fraud, one arrest and three ejections.

“This is crazy, it’s just way too easy,” Laskowski says. “But that’s how some crowds are - you kick a few people out and they calm down.”

Now on the arena floor, Lenik says the event went a lot better than it could have.

“I was thinking totally worst-case scenario, that chairs were going to be thrown all over and people were going to be moshing like crazy,” she says.

Criminal justice sophomore T.J. Pake just finished his first event for Breslin as a member of the production staff.

“It was a lot calmer than we thought it was going to be,” he says. “It turned out nice and everyone cooperated.”

And as the last of the fans file out of Breslin, Laskowski looks around and breathes a sigh of relief tinted with a look of surprise.

“I’m mildly shocked that no one got hurt,” he says. “Most of the people either sat or stood.

“They sat for the first band and stood up for Tool - I didn’t really see anyone mosh, it was a really easy night. It was a little bit harder than Cher, but it wasn’t that much harder.”

Dan Julian can be reached at julianda@msu.edu.