Town Hall Meeting Video

[Garret]

Concerning the safety issues about Detroit... St. Louis is second in the country when it comes to crime... And Atlanta is also in the top 6 at least.
FIRST has had championships in some "dangerous" places, and I haven't heard very many reports from teams about how bad the cities were.

Thought this was slightly relevant, but at our Super Regional in Oakland, CA, our FTC team got to witness a homeless man pull a knife and start threatening people right outside the restaurant where we were at. Additionally right across the street from where this was going on there was another FTC team waiting to get into another restaurant. This all occured about 100-150ft outside of the hotel/venue where the tournament was at.

For some of our team members that was a very traumatic experience that turned that "championship" experience into a rather negative one as opposed to positive.

This experience has me very concerned about FIRST moving champs to a city that is supposed to be more dangerous that Oakland. The fact that just because they personally haven't experienced anything there is one of the lamest excuses I have ever heard (my personal opinion).