Cops
Arrest Kids After Bottle-Throwing Melee In The Bronx
Residents
of Concourse Village in the Bronx say cops randomly arrested bystanders in a
massive sweep of an apartment building after bottles were thrown from the roof
at police officers Saturday. A massive police presence surrounded the building
around 6 p.m., as a crowd of some 50 people gathered outside, according to
DNAinfo. Witnesses and those arrested say police indiscriminately
pepper-sprayed and arrested innocent bystanders, including an eighth grade boy
and a mother who said she was pepper-sprayed and arrested while trying to keep
her children out of it.
A
mobile police surveillance tower had been installed at the scene about two
weeks earlier, due to gang activity in the area. After bottles began raining
down from the roof of the building, near the corner of 163rd Street and Teller
Avenue. Cops at the location called for backup, and as you can see from this
video, a chaotic scene soon unfolded in the courtyard. The person who uploaded
the video writes, "Heard yelling.. Looked out the window and this is the
shit I see.. These cops have been violatin this area for the past month.. Goin
extra hard for quotas and Tryna make it seem like they actually do."
At
least ten people were arrested, four of whom were under the age of 16, and one
officer injured his hand after a person allegedly kicked him. Jermaine Brown,
whose 14-year-old son was arrested and pepper-sprayed when he went out to see
what the yelling was about, tells DNAinfo, "They arrested a model kid for
no reason. I’ve lived in this area for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything
like this." It's unclear if police arrested whoever threw the bottles.
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hearings into the police problem in America.
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Misconduct.