Some snapshots of the people and activities involved in the 2011 Unofficial St. Patrick's Day:

The emergency operations center at the Fire Service Institute looked like a scene out of a James Bond movie.

"This is tactical operations," said University of Illinois police Lt. Todd Short.

There were police, firefighters, medical people and dispatchers in a huge room with several conference tables. The police, most of them lieutenants settled into comfortable chairs, hunched over laptops while watching seven huge screens on the wall and listening to radio traffic. They were watching scenes from the 300 security cameras that have been installed on the UI campus since August. Extra cameras were installed on Green Street this week, Short said.

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Jim Prouty of Mahomet had a fairly comfortable seat himself. From 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, he was hunkered down in the cab of a pickup truck watching his employers' buildings. Public safety folks have made a concerted effort to involve property managers in Unofficial for the last few years.

"We're just making sure people are not throwing stuff off balconies and such," said Prouty, a maintenance supervisor for University Group. The company has about 40 buildings on campus, Prouty said, and a staff of about six, plus two off-duty cops it hired, were hanging out at their properties all day Friday.

A 14-year veteran of his job and Unofficial St. Patrick's Day, Prouty observed around 3 p.m. that the event was "a lot tamer."

"I haven't seen any furniture or TVs tossed out," as he had in previous years.

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Susan Jepsen, chief financial officer of Reynolds Towing, 1417 W. Kenyon Road, U, said Unofficial is always the best business day of the year for her company, one of five active towing companies in Champaign and Urbana.

"It beats any snowstorm we've had," she said. From midnight Thursday to 4 p.m. Friday, their employees had towed 99 vehicles, most of them from businesses and apartment buildings.

"Management is really trying to control the parties by (controlling) the number of people coming in," she said. "I'm half afraid that tonight could be worse."

"It hasn't been as bad as in past years, but it's been steady," she said, adding that 99 percent of their calls have been for relocations as opposed to calls from police to get vehicles because of an arrest or a DUI.

Reynolds employees started at 4 a.m. towing cars out of UI parking spaces that are reserved for employees.

"Last year, we started at 6 (clearing UI lots) and we didn't have enough time to get them out before employees arrived, so we started at 4 this year," she said.

Jepsen said she's always impressed with the reactions of those who come to ransom their vehicles.

"They're dressed in great colors. They have great stories. We get anything from kids lying about their leases to tears," she said.

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Ally Egan, a UI senior living in the 100 block of East Chalmers Street, Champaign, got to see a Reynolds employee in action. Egan parked her car, right outside her apartment window, in another tenant's spot.

"I was saving my space for a friend," she admitted. A representative of the landlord called Reynolds.

Reynolds employee Al Kuhn was in the midst of getting the car secured when Egan came out with her credit card and a plea to move it back to where it was supposed to be.

He allowed her to have the car back for half what it would have cost if he had hauled it to the company's north Urbana lot – a bargain $70.

"At least we caught it on time. There's plenty of people to share the ticket (tow cost) with," Egan said.

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Unofficial is intergovernmental cooperation in action when it comes to public safety.

Police are usually reticent to say the number of officers devoted to the event, but it’s safe to say it’s a lot.

There are marked and unmarked vehicles from the Illinois State Police, Champaign, Urbana, UI and the Champaign County sheriff’s office all over campus.

Firefighters are also on alert for medical calls.

Officers from different departments are paired so that they can have “cross-jurisdictional capability.” That means that an Urbana cop can issue a ticket in Champaign and vice versa.

“We have street sweep teams, covert teams and party enforcement teams. They work together,” said Champaign Sgt. Scott Friedlein.

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The first party of the day was shut down around 6 a.m., Friedlein said. It didn’t count in the official numbers because it was handled by patrol officers who were on duty before the Unofficial details started at 8 a.m.

“They were throwing stuff off a balcony,” Friedlein said.

That particular indiscretion is one that really gets under the skin of public safety officials because of the potential danger to passers-by. The good news for police is that they can issue an ordinance violation to the renter of the apartment from whence the offending object got hurled instead of having to prove who threw it.

It wasn’t until just before 11 a.m. that the next party got shut down. Police issued 17 ordinance violations for minors in possession of alcohol and three hosts were ticketed for offering multiple kegs. The mayor had limited parties to one keg.

As Friedlein predicted, the more alcohol that got consumed, the more enforcement was needed.

By 5 p.m., Friedlein estimated there had been at least a dozen private parties shut down.

“The balconies are killing us,” he said.

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Enrick Baltazar, a 22-year-old senior from Naperville, was taking in his first Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day in Champaign and snagged a prime metered parking space on South Fifth Street just south of Green in Champaign.

“I got here by 7:30 a.m.,” he said of the prize space as he searched for quarters to feed it. “I arrived at 2 a.m., visiting a friend who let us sleep in the dorm.”

“This is my first Unofficial,” said the senior at the UI Chicago. “I heard it was really reckless and fun. I kinda want to experience that before I graduate.”

“My mom is really worried. She’s been texting me all day,” he said.