This incident has always intrigued me. There is a video somewhere on the internet about this scenario.
The police had originally responded to complaints about a loud party. The responding officers went to the residence and asked them to keep it down then left. Then there was another call where the party had escalated to fighting outside of the residence. The officers then responded to the second call and then there were additional radio calls where the officers were yelling they were getting attacked by a large crowd of Samoans with rocks and bottles.
The situation continued to escalate until there were some 50 police cars and a helicopter overhead with nearly 100 deputies dressed in riot gear.
The large party actually consisted of about 25-30 Samoan women and 10 Samoan men who were all very large. 1 of the Samoan women was a professional wrestler.
The video of the incident from a civilian showed a large crowd of officers in riot gear, but there was no one on the video throwing rocks or bottles at the officers. In fact, the party-goers exiting the house seemed rather peaceful and the officers were indeed over-reacting.
I concluded from reading the reports and watching the video that the officers were really victims of the "group think". The officers who initially responded painted a bleak unrealistic picture over the radio of a crowd of large people congregating in the street with rocks and bottles attacking the officers.
I suspect there might have been some initial antagonistic behavior with a few aggressive acts by the party-goers. However, as more officers joined the scene because of the radio calls from the initial officers, the situation kept escalating. The officers who later joined the scene were under the impression they were in a violent situation and thus came on the scene with that attitude. The party-goers were actually not engaged in non-violent acts, but the officers were under the impression they were. In fact, it was just a crowd of large women who came to watch a professional wrestler.
This scenario was from 1988, but the video and report has always intrigued me and I wonder how the situation escalated from a few officers responding to a noise complaint to 100 officers in the street with riot gear.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...53C1A96E958260