Two connected altercations that occurred on the corner of Beekman and Brinkerhoff streets last Saturday night resulted in four arrests, Plattsburgh City Police Chief Desmond Racicot said.
Adam Herrmann, Fred Mowers, Derrick Williams and David Niles were all arrested for disorderly conduct and failure to adhere to an officer’s command, Racicot said.
Herrmann and Mowers are both PSUC students, while Williams and Niles are not affiliated with the college.
Racicot said officers were called about a fight on Beekman Street at
12:33 a.m., where they found a group of people in the area of 28 Beekman St. People were then seen walking to the back of 147 Brinkerhoff St., the Alpha Chi Rho — AXP — fraternity house.
After some investigation, Plattsburgh City Police found that an altercation between two groups of people occurred, one group consisting of AXP fraternity members and the other consisting of black males, Racicot said.
But Racicot said there is no evidence that race played an issue in the occurrence.
“Nothing’s come by the desk to say that it was racially related,” Racicot said. “It’s one of those things, if there are two groups fighting and one group is fraternity guys and the others are not, people say it’s a frat thing. It’s very easy to draw those conclusions.”
AXP President Mike Correa had similar sentiments.
“I don’t want this to be framed as a race thing,” he said. “It had nothing to do with it.”
At 1:26 a.m., a group believed to be the same black males from the earlier incident came back to the area where the fight previously occurred, which was when arrests were made, Racicot said.
Hermann said his arrest occurred while trying to keep the group of males off AXP’s property.
After coming back from downtown, Hermann said he saw 20 to 30 people coming toward the AXP house “violently,” which prompted him and his fellow fraternity brothers to protect their property. In protecting the property, however, Hermann said the altercation was pushed onto Brinkerhoff Street outside of AXP’s property lines, which resulted in his arrest.
“It was us keeping them off our property,” Hermann said. “Since it got pushed out onto Brinkerhoff it wasn’t my property, so I got arrested.”
He said he was in a verbal altercation with a member of the opposing group when suddenly a cop took a hold of him.
Correa said the whole incident stemmed over a misunderstanding that started at 28 Beekman St.
Correa said a fraternity brother and residents of 28 Beekman St. were kicking someone out of their residence after they found him trying to break into a room of the house. As they were kicking the person out, Correa said the tenants were yelling for the person to leave when a group of black males walked by who mistook the tenants to be yelling at them. As a result, words were exchanged between the two groups, which ended in the group passing by 28 Beekman St. to call more of their friends to the situation.
“We think it was kind of one of those situations where people just crossed paths,” Correa said. “The fact of the matter was that they wanted to fight, they brought more people to the situation and called for their friends.”
Once the opposing group called more people to the situation, Correa said other members of AXP were informed of what was happening. When the opposing group returned, the first altercation occurred, though Correa said he was unaware of what sparked the fight.
“Our guys were called just for damage control,” Correa said. “We weren’t looking to fight; it was just a matter of safety.”
After the first altercation, Correa said he put the house on “lock down,” as he did not want another altercation and wanted to “be left alone.”
But later on, Correa said the group returned and “tried to bum-rush” their porch.
As a result of the altercations, Correa said the vice president of AXP was cut in the forearm. He was taken to CVPH Medical Center and received five staples.
“He’ll be OK, but there’s no excuse for that,” Correa said. “You don’t bring anything like that to that level.”
Correa said he was happy Plattsburgh City Police apprehended people in the second altercation, as it stopped any more altercations from occurring.
Correa said AXP was not looking for a fight and is not looking for any type of retaliation.
“We weren’t trying to start a riot; we don’t go out looking for trouble,” Correa said. “We have a lot on our plate. We have a charter. We have values.”
Both Hermann and Correa said they do not know who was involved in the opposing group.
This inability to recognize the opposing group, however, is the scariest part of the situation.
“That’s the scariest part about it because everyone knows who we are,” Correa said. “If we come across these people, we won’t even know.”
8 comments
Did cardinal points just serve as a portal for AXP's press release for damage control?The other young men have their names printed in this article -- which would come up in a simple google search-- and they were not even given the chance to defend themselves or tell their side of the story like Correra was.On another note, the article is working so hard to keep race relations out of the incident, so why would you state "one group consisting of AXP fraternity members and the other consisting of black males" Is this implying that AXP fraternity members cannot be black males? or that black males just always "approach violently"Let's think a little further into our reporting and keep some journalistic integrity when we are reporting on stories that can seriously impact the public perception of youth. This is not TMZ or some gossip column, its an award winning college newspaper, so when we put reporters on stories like this, i think they should consider getting the whole story before printing.