Carmel Stadium is a valuable asset to the city of Carmel. It is officially owned by the Carmel Dads Club for use for their Pups team. However, the stadium has multiple people use it: Some community members use the track and the stands to exercise. The Carmel High School Football team uses it for their home games and practices. It’s used by the girl’s and boy’s track and field teams. And it’s used by the lacrosse team on occasion.

Just as the stadium itself is used by countless folks, the home side parking lot of the stadium has versatile uses. The marching band uses it for practice. The cross country team uses it to warm up. Many football and track team members who drive use it as a parking lot for both school and practice. But there is one group whose usage of the home side parking lot is the focus of this piece: The Carmel Police Department.

During the springtime, usually sometime after Spring Break, the Carmel Police Department brings their Mobile Command Unit out to the home side parking lot, initiating an annual weeklong training of Carmel Police Officers with realistic scenarios to help sharpen their skills. These scenarios include car chases, gunfight scenarios, and other drills that the police might encounter while on patrol. And since the home side parking lot is big enough to house 3-4 full football fields, you can see why the police choose this as their training ground.

However, because the police have to shut the gates to keep civilian and police officer lives safe and separate, an unintended consequence of these drills is that parking at the stadium is at a premium. I have heard seniors in some of my classes complain there is not enough parking. During this weeklong training session, I play witness to more passes to the dean’s office for parking violations than I do in any other week.

And because of the lack of parking, this has led drivers to park at places that would be illegal, such as parking in the CHS senior parking lot or on campus without a parking pass, parking downtown in the parking garage (which is illegal under city ordinance), or every bus driver’s worst nightmare (and my personal favorite), people parking in the grass on the trail. This has led to more fines, tickets, citations, and accidents than at any other week in the school year.

But despite this situation, there is one thing we can change that might reduce these fines, tickets, citations, and accidents: How the police department notifies others. As of right now, the police department closes the home side parking lot without warning, leaving some drivers to park illegally due to the inevitable parking shortage. If the Carmel Police Department notified students that park at the stadium the home side parking lot will be closed from X Date to Y Date, from B Time to C Time, then this could reduce the number of fines, tickets, and citations, and therefore less accidents.

How to alert the student body? Well, if the police department notified the school as to when the home side parking lot will be closed for use in their drills, the school could announce those dates and times to the students, perhaps even announcing it in SRT. Since every student has an SRT, the students could not say they didn’t hear it, and this would also get the word out to everyone.

In this way, by announcing these dates in SRT, this alerts the students ahead of time so they can either choose to drive and potentially suffer the consequences, they can carpool with another student, or they can take the bus which is what I usually elect to do when these drills are going on.

By notifying the school, we can keep our parking lots from overfilling while at the same time allowing the police officers to participate in these crucial drills to help keep our officers safe, which in turn will help keep us safe. I ask that in the future, the police department alert the students who drive in some way, either by an announcement in SRT or other means, so that way during this crucial training time for the CPD, there would be less people parking illegally because there would be less people driving, there would be less tickets, fines, and citations, and therefore keep accidents, potential or otherwise, down.

And by the way, why did I get a parking violation just now?