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Police attempt to stop a photographer from shooting a photo. |
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Photo courtesy Dustin Rogers
Police detain a young man against a car. |
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Post fireworks brawl explodes in Provincetown
By Mary Ann Bragg & Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN — A night of brawling unlike any Independence Day in 30 years here has raised questions about police staffing and crowd dispersal.
An estimated 2,000 people jammed the block in front of Town Hall around 10 p.m. Monday night, after the waterfront fireworks display, leading to drunken, unruly behavior and some reported police overzealousness.
At its worst moment, around 11 p.m., three fights were in progress. Police became encircled as they waded into the middle of one fight: one person jumped on a state police officer’s back, extended batons were used to push back the crowd and the pushing and shoving led to injuries and arrests. “Despite the fact that we had 10 seasoned [state] troopers and 10 [Barnstable County] deputies as well as our team of regulars and summer officers numbering around 15, we were outnumbered in terms of having to handle separate events,” Police Chief Ted Meyer wrote in his report to the Board of Selectmen.
Staff Sgt. Warren Tobias, who has been an officer for 30 years, described the night as “kids who can’t hold their alcohol” and the “the worst” July 4th he’d experienced.
Police were still filing paperwork on Tuesday but the estimate is that 24 arrests and 14 protective custody detentions were made Monday night. There were at least half a dozen drug overdoses, as well.
Meyer reported that his office had received multiple complaints about two separate incidents from Monday night. “None of [the complaints] seem to have much substance and were apparently made in the anger of the moment,” Meyer said. “They perhaps can be viewed as perceptions of what people thought happened.”
And there are widely varying direct accounts of what did happen in the two hours. Resident Dieter Groll, who is chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, watched as police quickly dispatched a small fight near MoJo’s take-out on Ryder Street, just after the fireworks ended. Groll said the hot temper of that fight seemed to boil over onto Commercial Street in front of Town Hall, to what people describe as the worst, and scariest, moments, at around 11 p.m. “I don’t know what started or caused that one but all of a sudden the officers started taking down a bunch of people,” Groll said, emphasizing that he saw more aggressive behavior from the state police and Barnstable County deputies than from the Provincetown officers.
Groll observed a state police officer hassling a man for taking photographs of the fight. The trooper continued to antagonize the photographer, Groll said, until finally the state trooper took the man aside to the county emergency communication van that was set up on Ryder Street. “He physically took the camera from him and attempted to remove the digital card from the camera,” Groll said.
(On Tuesday Police Chief Meyer responded to this account by saying that the state police were concerned about how the photographs would be used, perhaps to incite further rioting. Meyer said the man was released once he said he was taking photos for a media outlet.)
A young man from the Outer Cape, who spoke to the Banner on Tuesday, said he had physically obstructed a police car accidentally and ended up apologizing to two officers who got out of their car to approach him. Once the officers were satisfied with the apology, they returned to their car and then saw the young man flash a peace sign as the vehicle drove away. The vehicle then backed up, the officers came back to the young man and ended up pushing his face to the ground, smashing his nose. The young man was detained at the police station and then released with no explanation three hours later.
For Selectman Michele Couture, who watched some of the fights from her apartment window across from Town Hall, the night was frightening. “At some point that crowd ceased to be a crowd, they became a mob,” Couture said. She had closed her retail shop around 10:45 p.m. Monday night and went upstairs to her apartment. From her front window, she observed a packed street, a “huge bottleneck of people” being disrespectful of property and setting off fireworks, many of them young men in the age range of roughly 18 to 26. “They weren’t tourists, they were trouble-makers,” Couture said. “They clearly came to town to cause trouble, inciting police to have some sort of retribution against them. I thought the police showed admirable restraint. I thought they did an amazing job. Certainly there weren’t as many [police officers] as should have been to handle the crowd, and I don’t think it’s due to a lack of planning. Next year police need to look at a strategy for dispersing crowds after the fireworks.”
As midnight approached, the crowd began to thin in front of Town Hall, though the flashing lights of ambulances and police cars continued to light up the street. Knots of police officers were stationed all along Commercial Street. Closer to 1 a.m. a false fire alarm tripped at the Crown & Anchor resort complex, which led to an over-crowding complaint being called in to town officials by Deputy Fire Chief Warren Alexander.
“Police did the best they could to get people off the property,” Crown co-owner Rick Murray said on Tuesday. “We closed at 12:55 p.m., to help expedite the flow of people.”
Police estimated that around 800 people were outside the Crown as it closed.
Meyer has convened a public meeting for Thursday to discuss next year’s strategy for handling July 4th crowds.
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Deaconess takes over at Manor
In the News
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Jul 7th, 2005