Cory Provost, a witness of the
Delray Beach melee says the situation started over an argument with police
By Kate Jacobson
A witness to a melee that broke
out in Delray Beach on Saturday said the situation became heated when police
officers approached a birthday party at a house in the Southwest neighborhood..
It lead to a 50-plus person
melee that included a group of people forming a human shield to keep officers
from a man who police wanted to detain.
Raw video of a melee that broke
out in Delray Beach on Saturday, after Officers say they smelled marijuana in
the area.
Cory Provost, a New York City
resident who is visiting Delray Beach over the holidays, said about 30 people
were at a birthday party on the corner of Southwest Eighth Avenue and Southwest
Third Court just after 7:30 p.m. when an unmarked police car pulled up to the
house.
He said two officers wearing
uniforms got out of the car, walked onto the lawn and accused the partygoers of
smoking marijuana. Provost said that wasn't true.
"There was a lot of
shouting back and forth," he said. "The residents were asking the cops
to leave the yard and they didn't do so."
Part of the exchange was caught
on camera, which Provost uploaded to his YouTube channel.
Police Sgt. Nicole Guerriero
late Wednesday said the footage doesn't show the entire incident. And because
only a portion is being shown, police said, it's not a fully accurate depiction
of what happened.
Officers smelled marijuana in
the area, saw someone who they thought was smoking and followed him into the
yard, Guerriero said Tuesday. In an arrest report, officers said the man they
saw was a known drug user with whom they've had contact in the past.
Provost said the situation did
get out of hand — for both the partygoers and the police. He said at first,
people formed a semi-circle around police questioning them as to why they were
there. When police started yelling at them, he said, the people became more
agitated and began shuffling around.
"Then, a little later on,
something was thrown," he said. "You heard a glass crack, I think a
bottle or something was thrown, and I believe it hit the police vehicle."
Guerriero said the police
vehicle's windshield was damaged in the skirmish.
In the arrest report, police
said they were patrolling the area because it is an area known for high drug
use.
Guerriero said Tuesday the officers
were afraid of what could happen in the situation and called for backup. There
were four officers and an estimated group of 70 people involved by the end of
the scuffle, she said. It lasted for more than an hour.
Provost said police should've
tried to calm down the group in this situation. When the partygoers questioned
why the police were on private property, Provost said they should've gotten
answers, not yelling from the police.
"There's a lot of rhetoric
going around that if you question police you're anti-police, and I don't think
that's the case," he said. "I think we want to have police approach
situations with a little more compassion and respect because we, too, are human
beings. If there was more trust in the community of our police, a lot of these
situations wouldn't happen."