NORTHAMPTON — There were no arrests Sunday at two demonstrations downtown: a Trump rally and a counterprotest. But as hundreds converged on Main Street near its intersection with King Street, there were several confrontations by mid-afternoon, police said, confirming that they used pepper spray to disperse a fight and to control crowds.
Around 2:45 p.m., there was a report that a car hit a pedestrian, who said an object was thrown at him from the vehicle, according to a statement from the Northampton Police Department.
According to police, the pedestrian then yelled at the car. “The crowd then began to surround the vehicle,” reads the Police Department’s statement. “The driver then accelerated forward. There are conflicting reports about whether the pedestrian was struck by the vehicle or whether the pedestrian intentionally struck the vehicle … The pedestrian did not report any injuries and refused medical treatment.”
Northampton Police Chief Jody Kasper said police do not know what sort of item was thrown at the pedestrian. “Different witnesses said different items,” she said Monday.
Around the same time, police saw two men punching another man. Kasper did not know which protest group they were part of. Officers pepper-sprayed the men, causing one of them to leave the confrontation, but the fight continued between the two remaining men, and a group crowded around them, according to the Police Department. “The officers believed that a larger physical disturbance was about to break out. A second burst of pepper spray was deployed,” the statement reads.
While officers pulled the men apart, the statement continued, police said that one officer and man “were pushed to the ground and protesters got on top of the officer. Officers deployed pepper spray to disperse the crowd.” The protester who was punched was taken to Cooley Dickinson Hospital, police said.
Kasper said police are not sure what happened before the punches were thrown. “Of course, you have a lot of questions because these situations are chaotic,” she said, noting that there wasn’t time to talk to witnesses, and some did not cooperate with the police.
“When you have a fluid situation with escalating tensions … it’s difficult to conduct the investigation at that time,” Kasper said.
Tensions grew at the end of the demonstrations, said John Rivera, a Holyoke resident who came as a counterprotester. “The last couple minutes, I don’t even know how to describe it,” he said. He posted a video of the event on Facebook that had nearly 6,000 views on Monday afternoon.
When a police officer pulled a man away from a confrontation near GoBerry, Rivera said he thought the person didn’t do anything wrong and so he grabbed him. He said he was pepper sprayed. “He sprayed me as well as other people,” Rivera said of the police.
Elyjah Gaspar, an 18-year-old Northampton resident, said he was spat on by a Trump supporter at the rally.
A video Gaspar said his friends captured shows a man in a Trump T-shirt with his mask off his face and around his chin. The man without his mask on is yelling “you are in support of pedophilia.” Someone off-camera says “put your mask on.” He then says, “put my mask on?” and appears to spit on the ground, then spits at something out of view of the camera.
Gaspar said the spit landed on his chest. “It was just really insulting,” he said in an interview Monday. “I don’t care … who you support, you don’t spit on someone like that.” He said he asked the man to put his mask on, and that prompted the spitting.
Gaspar’s mother, Rachel Rothman, posted the video on Facebook in hopes of finding the person who she says spit at her son, who said he is thinking about filing a police report. Kasper said as of Monday afternoon, the department had not received any reports of spitting at the protests.
When asked about people not wearing masks at Sunday’s rallies, and enforcing the mandatory mask rule downtown in this situation, Kasper said, “It’s really important that we enforce laws and ordinances consistently. We have not issued mask violations on Main Street for the fine.”
Police have issued some warnings to several businesses and one fine for a business owner in Florence. “It wouldn’t be reasonable to have not written any and then one day there is a protest event, and we begin writing citations. That would be perceived as not treating everyone equally,” Kasper said.
She added, “I sometimes get frustrated when people don’t wear masks, but I don’t have any expectation that an officer is going to wade into a crowd of high-intensity protesters and ask for their IDs to issue tickets. That’s not practical, and I believe it would continue to escalate tension.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.