Chaos, Police at Houston Mall for Legend Blue 11 Lineup

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This weekend, news broke of chaos erupting at various Houston-based malls over the Air Jordan 11 “Legend Blue” ticket lineup. While we’re happy to say there were no casualties reported nor arrests, there were reports of shots fired, shattered glass doors and a 17-year old girl being shot by a taser by a police officer, though the latter remains under investigation.

Though the headlines and reported incidents are far from good, it does appear that the week before lineup method and police assistance may have contained the madness better than standard day-of drops. Still, many police officers had to be pulled off their regular patrol duties to do so and certain mall areas were left in a mess.

Last month when we spoke to boutiques across the country about the best launch methods for high profile releases, all agreed that having control, authority and respect of the consumers is essential for a smooth launch. The inherit issue with major releases at large malls appears to be that the crowds become so big that there is rarely enough security to provide adequate authority.

All boutiques we spoke to voiced the opinion that the responsibility for handling a high profile launch does NOT fall on the sneaker brands but rather the stores operating their own release. The question then is how does a major mall handle this scenario when there are multiple stores within the mall selling the shoe and hundreds of customers racing store to store? Increased security, whether in-house or police supported, certainly seems like a start. Some smaller stores have pulled pairs and refused to sell to crowds that are unruly. Could a mall do the same thing? Should a mall do the same thing? It’s hard to say.

The other obvious answer is always that more sneakers should be made. While increased allocations have certainly made Air Jordans more accessible than previous years, problems still persist at some level.

At the end of the day, this is just one city with reports of chaos for the early lineup (though still no deaths or arrests were reported) out of the whole country where we’ve reported that many, many cities are slated to get the “Legend Blue” 11s. Still, violence tends to happen every year around this time. Clearly progress has been made, but there’s still work to do.