That viral video of teens fighting at Lee’s Summit fest isn’t what you think | Porter
This week, I asked Sgt. Chris Depue with the Lee’s Summit Police Department to explain what I saw on a viral video clip from this past weekend’s disturbance at the city’s annual Downtown Days Festival. Depue serves as a public information officer.
In case you missed it, unruly teenagers caused so much unrest by fighting and destroying property at the annual family-friendly event that organizers announced on Tuesday that the 37-year-old festival would be discontinued.
In the video clip circulating on social media, some of the footage shows a group of young people apparently swarming a police officer while he was on his knees on the ground trying to break up a fight at Downtown Days over the weekend.
While social media detectives claimed the officer may have been brutalizing the girl — he wasn’t — other “Back the Blue” types swore up and down that teens swarmed the officer to cause him harm. Here’s the rub, though: According to Depue, neither is true. The footage is misleading, Depue told me in an email. The officer seen on the ground was simply protecting a teenage girl who had been in a fight with another girl, according to Depue.
“That video is misleading,” Depue wrote. “We knew then that the video was circulating, and we went to great lengths to address it. Here is what you are seeing in that video:
“Two officers on foot patrol in the festival observed two juvenile females fighting. Both officers intervened and each officer grabbed a female combatant. The officer in the video went to the ground with his person and realized as they were both falling that he did not want to fall directly on her, so he braced himself and landed on the ground in the push up position shielding the girl from his body weight. While he was doing this, and maintaining control of the girl who was fighting, an additional female comes into frame still wanting to fight and assault the girl underneath the officer.”
In the clip, a young girl could be seen kicking at the girl the officer had under his control.
“That girl’s intent was to kick the girl lying beneath him,” Depue wrote. “The officer stated that he was not assaulted but knew that he had to protect the girl he was detaining from further assault from members of the crowd. As the video progresses, another officer arrives on scene and secures the girl who was kicking at the girl on the ground.”
For what it’s worth, I appreciate Depue’s willingness to provide some clarity about the brief clip. And shout out to the officer seen in the video for trying to protect the girl from being attacked. In fact, everyone involved in trying to maintain peace that day deserves a pat on the back. Policing isn’t easy. Controlling a raucous and unruly crowd of teens at an outdoor festival certainly isn’t either.
As with anything else we consume on social media, viewing clips from the Downtown Days fiasco should serve as a very important reminder to always consider the context of what we see or read on the internet and get the whole story before making assumptions without all the facts.
