Three White men were charged with assault after they attacked a Black riverboat co-captain at the city’s Riverfront Park over the weekend and ignited a brawl largely along racial lines, authorities in Montgomery, Ala., said.
Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert told reporters Tuesday that the three men aboard a private pontoon boat — Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25 — have four warrants pending in the attack on Damien Pickett, a co-captain of the Harriott II Riverboat, which was blocked from docking by the pontoon boat. Roberts has two warrants pending, while Todd and Shipman each have one pending warrant.
“The co-captain, as he approached the dock and attempted to peacefully move the boat over, the owners of the boat confronted him in a hostile way,” Albert said.
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Authorities said that they had consulted with the FBI and do not have the evidence to charge the men with a hate crime or with inciting a riot. Albert told reporters Tuesday that authorities may bring additional charges if more evidence becomes available.
The Rev. Rayford Mack, president of the Metro Montgomery NAACP branch, said he is not rushing to any conclusions but hopes to have more information soon.
“We’re waiting to see where the investigation leads,” he said. “In this day and time, the question always arises: If that co-captain of the boat had been White, would they have jumped on him then?”
Albert said one of the men has turned himself in to police, while the other two would appear soon. Police have also called on Reggie Gray, a 42-year-old Black man who was seen on video hitting people with a folding chair during the brawl, to turn himself in. Neither Gray nor the three White men charged immediately responded to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.
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Police detained 13 people for questioning, then released them, Albert said.
Videos taken by onlookers and spread around the internet showed the Black co-captain, Pickett, arguing with one of the pontoon boaters as a second White man charges at Pickett and hits him in the face. Pickett then tosses his cap into the air before the two hit each other. Almost immediately, Pickett is swarmed by several White men on the dock who throw punches while the Black man is on the ground, according to the videos posted online.
White and Black people on the dock and shore appear to jump in to try to help Pickett. Also in the video, someone appears to jump off the riverboat and swim to the dock to help the co-captain.
“Get up there, young buck!” someone can be heard shouting from the riverboat in the video. That person, only identified as a 16-year-old named Aaren, said he only did what he “was taught to do,” his family’s publicist, Makina Lashea, said in a statement posted to Facebook.
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After the initial tussle calmed down, videos appeared to show a group of Black men confronting the White boaters. That fighting lasted more than a minute, with one of the Black men — allegedly Gray — recorded hitting a White woman in the head with a folding chair and then being surrounded by police. One person appeared to have gotten punched off the dock into the water.
Share this articleShareThe Montgomery Police Department responded to a call of a reported disturbance about 7 p.m. Saturday and found “a large group of subjects engaged in a physical altercation,” Maj. Saba Coleman of the Montgomery police said Monday.
Albert said Pickett may have been the only one to receive treatment at a hospital.
Everyone should learn conflict resolution, Albert said, to avoid such brawls.
“We talk about conflict resolution and de-escalation all the time,” Albert told reporters. “It’s not only for kids. It’s not only for teenagers and juveniles. Everyone must be aware of conflict resolution or de-escalation. There was no need for this event to take the path it did.”
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Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed (D) in a statement Sunday called the fight “an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred.” He said police detained “several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job.”
Reed, the city’s first Black mayor, is in the midst of a reelection campaign. He won in 2019 with roughly two-thirds of the vote in a city remembered as both the birthplace of the civil rights movement and the cradle of the confederacy. He said Sunday that “those who choose violent actions will be held accountable by our criminal justice system.”
The incident occurred at the Riverfront Park on the banks of the Alabama River. The park features the Harriott II, which offers dinner, dancing and live entertainment, according to the city’s website. The park also has an amphitheater, a stadium and a Union Station Train Shed, which has been a National Historic Landmark since 1976.
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Montgomery, where Black people make up over 60 percent of the city’s population, according to U.S. census data, has historically had high-profile racial tensions.
It was a hub for trading enslaved people before becoming a major focus in the civil rights era. Montgomery was key in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech at the end of his historic Alabama march: “From Montgomery to Birmingham, from Birmingham to Selma, from Selma back to Montgomery, the trail wound in a circle, long and often bloody, yet it has become a highway up from darkness,” King said. The city was also the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White man.
Reed and the NAACP’s Mack emphasized that what unfolded Saturday was an isolated incident that does not represent Montgomery.
“This is not indicative of who we are,” the mayor said.
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