According to local police, four active warrants have been issued and more might be coming in the wake of a Saturday evening brawl on the waterfront in Montgomery, Alabama.
via AL:
Videos from the scene showed multiple people in handcuffs, and a statement released late Saturday night by the Montgomery Police Department said that “several subjects had been detained and any charges are pending.”
Late Sunday, police released a brief follow-up statement.
It said that four warrants were active and “there’s a possibility more will follow after the review of additional video.” No further update was planned until Monday afternoon.
Late Sunday afternoon, Mayor Steven L. Reed issued a statement via social media. It said, in full:
“Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job. Warrants have been signed and justice will be served. This was an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred. As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community. Those who choose violent actions will be held accountable by our criminal Justice system.”
Videos posted to social media illustrated a sequence of events that started, some observers said, when a dispute arose around parking space at a dock.
A video clip shared by Josh Moon, a reporter for the Alabama Political Reporter, shows the scuffle beginning as a Black man who appears to be in uniform as a docks worker is talking to a white man.
Another white man, this one shirtless, launches forward and strikes or shoves the Black man in the head.
The video doesn’t reveal anyone’s motivations or what sort of verbal exchange might have preceded this first strike.
From there, the incident unfolded largely along racial lines.
The dock worker and the man who struck him engaged in a one-on-one shoving match for a moment before the first white man placed a hand on the Black man in an apparent effort to separate the two.
As he did so, two more shirtless white men charged in, one of them tackling the Black man to the dock and the other piling on, rapidly joined by a fourth shirtless white man, one of whom shoved away another white man who seemed to be trying to intervene.
Two white women also were on the scene, though it wasn’t perfectly clear whether they were supporting the four-on-one fight then in progress or trying to intervene.
This and subsequent events unfolded before a large and vocal audience, consisting of people on the riverboat from which the first video was shot, and a crowd on land overlooking the dock.
In the first video, the initial scrum begins to break up as a Black bystander joins in. Another jumps off the riverboat, swimming to the dock to join in.
As the first Black man, identifiable by his black shorts and white shirt, makes his way back in the direction he’d come, he is physically confronted by one of the women.
A second video, taken moments later, shows a group of Black men running off the riverboat.
They converge on a pontoon boat that apparently carried some of the parties involved in the incident.
Within seconds fighting erupts again, between two white men and white woman who were on the pontoon boat, another white man and white woman who appeared to be trying to get to it, and more than half a dozen Black men.
At this point, the first officers or uniformed security guards can be seen trying to break things up.
The brawling continued for several moments, at the pontoon boat and at the riverboat, before tapering off. At that point officers began cuffing participants, Black and white
Watch video of the fight below. We don’t condone violence, but that was certainly a sight to see.
Fight between Black and White people at the Montgomery, Alabama Riverboat ride. pic.twitter.com/fob3yAnH0G
— Derenic Byrd (@DerenicByrd) August 6, 2023
Montgomery Riverboat fight Part 2. pic.twitter.com/dp3IciHml9
— Derenic Byrd (@DerenicByrd) August 6, 2023
