A massive snowfall Washington DC brought out a few hundred residents to play in the snow and have a snowball fight -- prompted apparently by a widespread Twitter notice. All seemed to be going well - and much fun was had ....
Fun until a passing Hummer got pelted with a snowball and the driver, an off-duty police detective, got out of his car and began threatening the crowd with a gun.
Images via D.C. DispatchesVideo of the event is here (via Gawker) including another video of the detective admitting he drew a gun on the unarmed crowd. Yeah, in the middle of a snowstorm, he gets angry for getting snow on his car?? And apparently he never identified himself as a police officer.
The crowd even helped one policeman helped get his car unstuck from the wintry mess. The Washington City Paper reports:
"Like so many others, Robin Bell heard about the snowball fight at 14th and U Streets NW and decided to go and check it out. He tells City Desk that prior to the incident, a cop car got stuck in the road and everybody stopped the snowball fight and helped the cop get his car out of the snow. "The crowd cheered and everybody was happy," Bell says.
Soon, though, he started hearing people shouting: "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"
"Then I walked over and I saw a police officer brandishing a weapon," Bell says referring to the uniform cop. He says he didn't see the detective brandish his weapon--only the furious aftermath. He says the detective was yelling and "kind of out of control." "It was really strange to see a police officer so upset and angry over what seemed at best a misunderstanding," Bell explains. "At worst, it was some kids throwing a snowball at him."
And according to this report on FOX News -- the snowballers were some deadly crowd of anti-war protesters who needed to be brought to Justice. War on Christmas is more than just a slogan for the hacks at FOX.
Who in the Third District MPD allowed this event to take place in the first place? These people were in the middle of a Snow Emergency Zone and fight across a busy metropolitan Intersection, on the sidewalsk, in the bus lanne & crossing into the lanes of traffic throwing snowballs and iceballs and one person said he was putting D size batteries inside his snowballs he threw!
ReplyDeleteWhat type of Police force allows this type of behavior to go on? Why weren''t these people directed to a Park, HS football field or other area so they would NOT harm Public Safety?
If the Uniformed Police knew about it why didn't they do there duty and re-direct these hundreds of people or do something before the hummer go hit? What if the hummer had been an ambulance or a Metrobus?