Police to review Saint Patrick’s Day weekend arrest
By Tom Lehman
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HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (WGAL) — A scuffle between a Saint Patrick’s Day weekend reveler and a Harrisburg police officer that saw the man pushed into a crosswalk and downtown traffic lane is being reviewed by city law enforcement leaders.
The incident happened some time before midnight on Saturday heading into Sunday at the corner of Second and Pine Streets as Saint Patrick’s Day was celebrated at downtown bars and clubs.
Lt. Kyle Gautsch, a Harrisburg police spokesman, declined to identify the man who was arrested and videotaped being taken down by police but said the man was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and cited for public drunkenness.
The man who was arrested had been believed to have been involved in a fight or altercation prior to law enforcement getting involved in the encounter, Gautsch said.
Prior to the encounter, video of the incident showed the man in an argument with another person on the sidewalk outside Nocturnal nightclub and being told to get off the property.
A family member of the man told WGAL their group had just been kicked out of the nightclub.
The video then shows an officer pushing the man into the crosswalk and traffic lanes, which were partially blocked by a police cruiser at the time of the incident, before the man falls to the ground and is restrained.
As the man is on the ground, several vehicles pass by, which prompted Marly Taylor, the woman who shot the video, to exclaim that the man was almost hit by a car.
In an interview with WGAL, Taylor said she thought what she saw was excessive.
“It just seems very unprofessional and the car was close to hitting his head and it just feels like if it had been more of a push that bad things could have happened,” she said.
Gautsch, who declined an on camera interview about the incident, would not comment on the tactics used by the officers or personnel matters.
The arrest came on a day when police had also responded to several other fights in the downtown area during the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations.
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