LOS ANGELES — City officials are scrambling to try to figure out how to accommodate a public memorial service for Michael Jackson at a venue that can hold no more than 20,000 people. The event has been set for 10 a.m. Tuesday at the downtown Staples Center, according to a statement from the Jackson family's publicist. Eleven thousand tickets will be distributed, the statement said. The service is expected to draw tens of thousands of spectators wanting to pay their respects to the King of Pop, who died June 25. How city officials will handle the massive crowd remains to be settled. Randy Phillips, chief executive of AEG Live, which owns the Staples Center and was Jackson's promoter, said tickets would be free. Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine said plans for the memorial are clearly moving forward, but he wished there had been more time to work out the logistics. "If you can imagine 100,000 people show up and you have 20,000 capacity, there is not sufficient room. Now you have a crowd-control problem," he said. With the July Fourth holiday weekend "it's the worst time ... to work something out." He also said he's concerned about the cost of police overtime for the cash-strapped city.
