The Seattle Seahawks are taking a drastic step towards trying to prevent fans from breaking the team’s code of conduct at home games. Undercover police officers will dress up as opposing fans in an attempt to stop unruly and disruptive behavior at Lumen Field, the team announced on Thursday.
The Seahawks said the move was made to more quickly detect instances that could get out of hand. Officers and Lumen event staff will intervene if they observe certain behaviors, which range from not following instructions from stadium personnel to using offensive language and gestures.
The Seahawks are known for having one of the loudest and most passionate fanbases, known as the 12th Man, in the NFL. But as the team rose to prominence during the 2010s, reports of fan-on-fan violence at games grew more frequent.
In fact, this isn’t the first time the strategy of dressing up undercover cops as opposing fans has been mentioned in Seattle. That exact idea was thrown around in 2013, when a Seattle police spokesman warned fans that police could dress up as opposing fans to stop unwanted behavior.
The Seahawks will open the 2025 NFL season with a home game against one of their biggest rivals, the San Francisco 49ers. That could explain why the team announced the policy today.
