By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — A YouTube video that shows a police officer spraying mace at a crowd of post-Dominican Day Parade revelers has the neighborhood up in arms.
Witnesses who were part of the large group singing and dancing on 186th Street, near St. Nicholas Avenue, about 11 p.m. on Aug. 8 said they were surprised by the police officer’s actions, and called the crowd loud and rowdy, but not violent.
Local residents who viewed the video after the incident all voiced disappointment with the way it portrayed the community, revelers and police.
Although noise and rowdy crowds after the parade can be a nuisance, they did not believe macing of revelers was an appropriate tactic for police to quell the crowds.
"A small but vocal number of revelers obviously went too far but by the same token it is reprehensible that the police officers decided that the way to fix the situation was by macing the crowd en masse," said local resident Leo Black, 36.
The video shows the crowd of revelers surrounded by a police squad car and unmarked car sitting in traffic with their lights and sirens on.
The crowd appears rowdy and boisterous as it chants “get out” in Spanish and motions for the police cars to move.
As the traffic seems to pick up, four plainclothes officers in the unmarked car suddenly get out and run toward the crowd, with one officer spraying people with what appears to be a can of mace.
The crowd then scatters and people can be heard saying they were “maced” with several people clutching their faces or being helped by friends.
Moments later bottles begin hitting the parked police car, which then takes off from the scene.
Arvey Valderrama, 21, said he was in the crowd when the police got out of their car and the officer began spraying mace.
“They did it 4 no reason,” he wrote in an email.
The creator of the video, filmaker Jay Arees, 23, said he was maced on his arm, neck and right eye at approximately 10:30 p.m.
“It wasn’t violent, he was just intimidated by the people, how many people there were,” Arees said of the officer who sprayed the crowd.
“He was a Caucasian male and there were minorities there,” he later added. “As a police officer you expect respect and they weren’t giving it to him so he maced them.”
Police did not respond to requests for comment about incident and could not provide information about arrests related to the day’s parade.
A pregnant teen was reportedly stabbed in the back of the head at the corner of 47th Street and Seventh Avenue during the parade, but no other arrests have been made public.
