What happened at Comerica Park?

It wasn't the scene anyone expected during Green Day's celebratory concert at Detroit's Comerica Park on Wednesday night: Band members were frantically waved off the stage mid-song, leading to a quiet, unsettling ten-minute pause in the rock festivities.

The interruption was later explained by the Detroit Police Department. An unauthorized drone was spotted above the crowd of more than 30,000 people and Green Day was removed for safety reasons. The suspected drone pilot was arrested by police and an initial investigation has been launched, the police department said.

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

No drone zone?Where they are allowed to fly and where they are not allowed to fly after one of them disrupted a concert in Detroit

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

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Meanwhile, a tweet posted on Green Day's official X account during Wednesday's concert was deleted sometime on Thursday. The message apologized for the show's delay and continued, “Stadium security instructed us to vacate the stage while they dealt with a potential safety issue. DPD quickly resolved the situation and we were able to continue.”

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

Steven Adelman, vice president of the national Event Safety Alliance, said drone incidents like the one at Comerica Park are rare, but security groups for concerts like his are well aware of the potential threat.

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Adelman said there are industry-wide protocols in place, including technology that allows security specialists to immediately intercept a drone's signal when it penetrates a designated no-fly zone and then direct it to a designated safe location.

This raises the question of what step may have been missed on Wednesday evening, he said.

“Drones are mostly cool toys,” said Adelman, a Connecticut lawyer. “Promoters use them to get great aerial shots of a crowd that looks like they're having a great time, and you can see faces illuminated by the lights on the stage.”

However, for security teams on site, it is “very obvious when an unauthorized drone is in operation,” he said. “It can carry cameras, but it can also carry other dangerous things – things that you don't want to drop from the sky over a packed outdoor stadium.”

Former sergeant Steve Shank spent more than a decade in charge of DPD security at major downtown events, including Comerica Park. Shank, now retired for two years, served in that capacity when radio-controlled consumer drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they're officially called, hit the market in 2010.

Although they are mostly used by innocent hobbyists, a drone in the hands of a criminal poses a danger in many ways, Shank said.

He described the Green Day incident as “very concerning” and a “total failure.” The former sergeant said that ideally, security and police officers at the concert would have spotted the drone before it penetrated the stadium.

“Especially at large events, we were always told that if the command center spotted an (unauthorized) drone overhead, we should press the button, interrupt the frequency and bring the drone down before it gets over the crowd,” Shank said.

The use of drones is generally permitted in downtown Detroit, but flights over large crowds require approval through a number of channels, including the FAA, which maintains its regional headquarters at Detroit Metro Airport.

Such requests are often made by event organizers and artists looking to capture video footage for everything from documentaries to promotional materials. Once a flight plan and a licensed operator are approved, local officials and security personnel are informed exactly when and where to expect a drone.

That's why you often see drones circling overhead at festivals, parades, sporting events and other crowded places in Detroit – and you can usually assume that's where they have their place.

Shank said that at every major event there is a command center, usually equipped with live camera feeds of the site and monitored by security personnel around the clock.

“The property is always under surveillance,” he said.

Drone use is ultimately regulated by the FAA, and many large or safety-sensitive events impose temporary flight restrictions through the agency. These events sometimes employ geofencing technology, which uses GPS to create an invisible wall that – in theory – stops a drone in mid-air. It's not clear whether such a system was active at Comerica Park on Wednesday.

Despite all precautions, drones sometimes get through, as happened at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor in 2019, when two people were arrested for flying a UAV over a University of Michigan football game. The two were charged with violating the regulation and FAA violations.

Shank recounted an incident several years ago at Campus Martius Park, where thousands of people had gathered for Detroit's Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Officials spotted an unidentified drone overhead, and just as they were narrowing down the amateur pilot's location on Monroe Street, he inadvertently flew his device into the Compuware building.

The heavy drone crashed from several hundred feet in the air, Shank said, and landed right next to a group of people, including children, sitting on the patio of the Hard Rock Cafe. No one was injured, but the drone pilot was arrested and charged.

“People have the right to fly these things, but the FAA has regulations 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 command center in Comerica Park, Shank said.

“I'm sure that after the drone was discovered, they used cameras to search for them downtown,” he said. “If you see someone with their hands on toggle switches, you can quickly identify them.”

Adelman, who is in charge of security at the concert, was not surprised that Green Day was abruptly escorted off the stage.

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

However, he was impressed that the band was back on stage just ten minutes later – which suggests that the group was given the all-clear “very quickly” regarding a possible security threat.

“On the spectrum of threats, an unauthorized drone is potentially very dangerous,” Adelman said. “But it's not a very difficult threat to contain 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 pretty quick process to get the drone safely to the ground.”

What happened at Comerica Park?

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