snow incident
I have a headache.
This snowpacalypse, aka snOMG, has been lots of fun. I am off today because of it.
Sometime Friday night, I saw an invitation on Twitter to go to a snowball fight two blocks from my house the next day. I've never been a fan of being hit by snowballs, and I throw like a girl, but I thought it would be fun to go to. The place it was being held, 14th and U Streets, has a special place in my heart. Not only is it a familiar spot in my neighborhood, and the site of our farmer's market, a routine meeting place for friends, close to a lot of favorite bars, restaurants, and playhouses, but it's where I did a lot of celebrating, with hundreds of people, on November 4, 2008 - really, well into November 5.
I forwarded the message on Twitter and follow-up details to friends and followers.
I went a little late, as I was hanging out with and making faces at my next-door neighbors' baby while they went to run some errands in the snow.
This is what it looked like when I arrived:
Mostly just a crowd of people gathered in the snow, laughing, some lobbing snowballs across the street at each other.
You can get a good sense of it here:
Mostly, it was cold, goofy fun.
I didn't throw any snowballs, and a lot of people were there just laughing and enjoying watching it all. I saw people get hit - even directly in the face - and laugh about it.
This is me in the height of the mayhem:
There were police there, at a distance, watching and laughing. Some of them were even taking pictures and videos with their phones. At one point, the cruiser that was nearby tried to make a u-turn in the street to leave and got stuck in the snow. Folks stopped the snowball fight to push them out:
Not too long after that, we heard sirens and a rumor went through the crowd that someone had pulled a gun. My friend, Stephanie, and I were stunned, and then kind of assuaged and laughed at ourselves saying "this is how rumors get started." We tried to dismiss it. There was, however, on the opposite side of the street, a Hummer that was stopped, and the driver had gotten out to confront the snowballers. I could hear the crowd chanting what I guessed was "don't bring a gun to a snowball fight."
What I couldn't see from my side of the street (west side represent!) was this:
and this:
and this, which has a video of the whole thing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8424836.stmWhat I now know is the man who got out of his Hummer to wave a gun at my neighbors, in my neighborhood, mere feet from me, was an off-duty detective with the Metropolitan Police Department. His name is Detective Baylor. He's since been placed on "non-contact status" while the incident is being investigated.
It blows my mind to think that this trained police officer got out of his vehicle - one designed after, essentially, an armored military vehicle - with his gun in his hand because of snowballs. He admits that he drew his gun because of
snowballs.
When this all happened, the snowball fight ended because it devolved from neighborhood fun to a scary incident. My friends and I went to a nearby restaurant to warm up and have some lunch and saw the whole thing play out on the TV news almost immediately after.
Since then, the snowball fight has been portrayed as an unruly mob, an anti war protest, and disorderly conduct by the public. A police captain, in an email to me, referred to it as a "snow incident." This was not a snow incident. This was a guy-with-a-gun incident.
The police chief has issued a statement saying that the detective's actions were "totally inappropriate." She also expressed dismay at the fact that, in spite of all the good work MPD officers have done this weekend, "the negative actions of one officer have become 'viral.'"
While I agree that the MPD does lots of good work, I am dismayed that this incident is being portrayed as anything other than what it was - a joyful, playful event disrupted by an unwarranted, unacceptable, outrageous threat of violence by an off-duty member of the MPD.
If you were on the scene and an eye witness to the incident, please contact the Internal Affairs Division. You can ask to speak with Captain George Dixon. Captain Dixon can be reached at (202) 727-4385.
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