David Michael Miller
Jayda Robbins-Reed, 14, had just finished watching the fireworks show at Shake the Lake when all hell broke loose.
Robbins-Reed noticed a “couple of girls” who she did not know get into a fight alongside John Nolen Drive, just west of Monona Terrace. A crowd of kids gathered to watch. And then the police showed up. In an attempt to stop the fight, police officers used pepper spray.
“Everything immediately went crazy,” says Robbins-Reed of the June 25 incident. “More people started fighting. Some people started screaming because they were in pain. People are running and shouting.”
The young teen says she and other bystanders were also hit with the noxious spray. “My face was burning, my arm was burning,” she says. “I called my mom in tears and said, ‘I was just maced by the police.’”
Robbins-Reed says after police used pepper spray, she helped a girl who looked to be 9 or 10. “She was like six feet away from police. My face really hurt, but you could tell she was in a lot more pain than I was.”
According to Madison police, 50 or more people of “mixed genders and ages” were brawling. After “verbal commands to stop fighting” were ignored, officers Richard Bruess and Benjamin Schwartz quickly deployed MK-9 OC spray, a strong type of pepper spray designed to disperse unruly crowds.
The police department did not release a report on the incident, and it did not make it to the news. Nor was it captured on video.
Police Chief Mike Koval and his officers have since defended their approach in interviews with Isthmus, while accounts from several witnesses are critical of the police response. The narratives differ more in tone than substance, however, reflecting a fundamental divide over police tactics that is in play in communities across the country. Were the police stopping teenagers from assaulting each other and preventing further harm to others in the area? Or did officers overreact because of the color of these young people’s skin? It depends on who you ask.
Shane Quella witnessed the incident after Shake the Lake while sitting in traffic on John Nolen Drive. “I don’t know if someone was fighting or what was going on. It just seemed like [the police] were pepper spraying a crowd of black people,” says Quella.
One citation for disorderly conduct, a municipal ticket, was issued to a 16-year-old girl as a result of the disturbance. In his report, Schwartz writes that after people started leaving the scene, the girl returned and “charged” him.
“I then raised the MK-9 OC canister at [the girl] and dispelled an approximately one-second burst of the MK-9 OC canister at [her], which was directed toward her face area. After [she] had been sprayed, she began to recoil and walked away toward the sidewalk.”
After six mounted officers arrived, the girl, whose name has not been released because she is a minor, was handcuffed and put in a squad car. Schwartz says she initially resisted being handcuffed. Bottled water was provided to the teenager because she complained of “burning and irritation to her face and eyes,” according to the report. She was released after being cited.
Jashia Thompson contacted the police department following the incident. As noted in the police report, she contacted Bruess to “get answers on why her 14-year-old sister” was pepper sprayed. “Thompson may be referring to the young juvenile I saw on the ground crying that was tended to by other officers for the spray she received,” Bruess writes in the report. “She [also] wanted the name for all of the mounted patrol units, as she saw one of them get off one of the horses and spray someone in the face with [pepper spray].”
Central District Capt. Carl Gloede confirms that six officers mounted on horses arrived at the scene after the two patrol officers. But he denies that any of the mounted officers used pepper spray.
The day after the July 7 mass shooting in Dallas that left five police officers dead, Koval was asked whether divisiveness between law enforcement and the community had reached a tipping point.
“Quite to the contrary,” Koval said at a news conference at the Municipal Building. “I think it’s issues like this that create a greater coalition for everyone’s appreciation of those that are hurt, injured or suffering, whether they wear a uniform like mine or whether they are being dealt with by the police.”
Koval’s comments came after a week of national outrage over police shootings of black men in Falcon Heights, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La. Closer to home, a viral video of 18-year-old Genele Laird being arrested at East Towne Mall June 21 was called “horrifying” and “gut-wrenching” by members of the Common Council. The next week, residents in the Marquette Neighborhood grappled with the death of a mentally ill man. Michael Schumacher, a 41-year-old Fitchburg man, was shot and killed after allegedly advancing toward officer Hector Rivera with a four-prong pitchfork outside a home on Morrison Street.
All of these incidents spurred protests in Madison during Art Fair on the Square this weekend and outside the Dane County Public Safety Building Monday morning.
Although the Shake the Lake incident didn’t make the evening news, word and rumor spread about it on social media, fueling suspicion about the police tactics and motives. One woman who witnessed the scuffle wrote on Facebook: “It was just odd to me in light of the racial tensions going on that nobody posted about a large fight involving black folks and the police.”
Gloede apologizes for not putting out a release, saying, “We should have and we didn’t.”
When asked about the incident, Koval says lights and sirens from police squads as well as verbal warnings from officers did nothing to break up the alleged brouhaha.
“That’s when [the officers] made the decision to deploy the pepper mace, and it was as if — literally — the Red Sea had parted,” says Koval. “It did have that desired effect.”
Koval acknowledges that conditions were less than ideal for using pepper spray. A brewing storm was kicking up wind that may have led to “collateral exposures.” But he defended his officers’ actions, saying that those involved in the alleged fight “could have been roundhoused to the point where they might have had fractures or lose consciousness.”
“You’re constantly balancing all of those safety issues for everyone,” says Koval. “It’s difficult. It’s mercurial. It’s very dynamic. I’m glad that the initial [pepper spray] dosing was sufficient to calm the waters.”
Koval says that all Madison police officers are tased and subjected to pepper spray during training so they know the pain that is inflicted by these devices. Koval says when recruits are asked which they’d rather endure, “100% say ‘Tase me, bro.’”
“It’ll be a five-second ride that [you] won’t forget,” he says of being tased. “But at the end of five and one-tenth seconds there is no residual. There’s no carry-over. The voltage ends. Conversely, if you’ve been pepper maced, this could protract itself for up to 45 minutes.”
Robbins-Reed doesn’t understand why she had to go through that.
“I don’t know who started what,” says the 14-year-old. “All I know is that I was in extreme pain. Pain that I had no fault for.”
