PITTSBURGH — The city’s public safety director is weighing in on a large fight that broke out among a crowd of juveniles in Downtown Pittsburgh over the weekend.
“Based on what we see downtown, it’s not acceptable,” Public Safety Director Sheldon Williams told Channel 11.
Williams told Channel 11 he came down to Market Square yesterday, when he got word that dozens of kids were fighting with each other and spraying pepper spray.
The chaos comes weeks before the NFL Draft, when Market Square has been getting a renovation specifically for the event.
“What I witnessed in those time frames were a bunch of kids who were just gathered, some of them were being kids, running around horseplaying and the like. As I watched that, I wanted to see the progression of the behavior so that I have a better understanding,” Williams said.
According to Williams, there were approximately 80 kids in the area, and when officers tried to break up the crowd, the teens ignored them. That’s when officers used their own pepper spray to move them out.
“Based on what we see downtown, it’s not acceptable. When it reaches those levels, it calls for a type of public safety response,” he added.
Seven kids were taken into custody, and about 20 people were treated for exposure to the pepper spray.
Williams told Channel 11 that he’s not ruling out the possibility of a curfew.
“Curfews were tried in the past in the city of Pittsburgh, and just because the past opportunities didn’t net the results we expected doesn’t mean we wouldn’t venture in that way. But we have to have good conversations about what we expect with our curfews,” he added.
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