Pirate Fans Worry About Police Brutality
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Pirate Fans Worry About Police Brutality
Pirate Fans Worry About Police Brutality
The win and what happened after the game are both big deals for a program that rarely gets national media attention.
“We’re supposed to be happy, we’re supposed to be cheerful not worrying about police brutality,” said Jarette Gattison.
Allegations that has stole some of their thunder.
On Saturday beating West Virginia on ESPN and the after game incident got plenty of national press.
“I saw the guy rush—he jumped over the fence and the next thing I know I see one cop hit him and he’s on the ground and some more cops came to try to put him down and then again there’s like 80, 90 more people who are jumping the fence,” said Akintunde Abison. The ECU student attended the game, “If you can let everybody else do it there’s no need for you depending on one person.“
“It was pretty shocking I guess I didn’t expect just because we were celebrating after we won and after that the cops just start charging from the fence,” said Jeffrey Miller.
But some attendees like Michael McGilvary say law enforcement had no choice, “It’s about half and half on the students and the police.“
While most of the students say the incident didn’t overshadow the big win against West Virginia, when it comes to how fans will receive law enforcement at the next big game that’s a different story.
Abisogun says, “Officers get out of control trying to keep sanity on the field.“
McGilvary agrees, “A lot of kids have stereotypes about police that aren’t needed but this is just going to make them look a little worse I think.“
And this is only the beginning of the football season.
ECU police tell Nine On Your Side, one man was arrested in that post game incident.
Two other men were arrested during the game.
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Reader Reactions
I have been to college games as a law enforcement officer and I can say that a lot of drinking is going on. Mix alcohol with irresponsible people and you have mayhem. It looked like the end of a soccer game in Latin America with people being over excited and acting stupid just over a foot ball game. Come on where is the maturity? A football game plus alcohol caused almost everyone to act in a way that they do not normally act and when that happens anything can happen and it did. Point being most people are ready to claim brutality and blame the police. There are two culprits, alcohol and football, people don’t know how to handle either one. Go figure.
Yes!! I think excessive force was used by the cops at the end of ECU’s game on Saturday! I was at the fence and from the time the cops came out to stand, they were rude and very aggressive. Sad to say that a female officer was one of the ring leaders. She and a few of her co-officers had their hand on their pepper spray and were exhibiting threatening behavior towards the crowd. We were treated like criminals down there in that endzone. WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS! We just wanted to go celebrate with our team! We wanted to show our beloved PIRATES how much we support them and how proud we were and show the nation that this is one of the best fan bases in the country. We had just unloaded on a top 10 team. It should’ve been expected that we were gonna want to rush the field and celebrate.
I thought the cops were supposed to serve and protect, not beat and body slam people. All the cops did was create a dangerous situation in that endzone and take the focus off of our football team!
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