A report of a large fight that might include weapons sent police officers in Iowa City and other area communities scrambling last night. Sergeant Troy Kelsay of the Iowa City police department says the call came in just before nine o’clock for a neighborhood on the southeast side of the city.
Kelsay says the call came in and said there were possibly baseball bats, guns and knives involved. He says Iowa City sent all its available officers to the area and other area police departments heard the call and also sent officers. Kelsay says officers arrive to find 50 or 60 people involved in a fight. He says everyone then started to scramble and finding out exactly what happened is tough.
Kelsay says some of the people have to have first hand knowledge of what happened, but none of them wanted to share the information with police and on the contrary were confrontational with officers. Kelsay says no guns or knives were discovered and three people reported minor injuries. Kelsay believes the issue isn’t solved.
Kelsay says he expects as the year progresses and the weather warms that police will get calls to the same area for more calls. He says whatever triggered this event is likely to trigger another problem. Kelsay says there are groups of people in the neighborhood that don’t get along. He stops short of calling them "gangs," but says there’s something that’s causing them to not get along over issues in the neighborhood.
Kelsay says: "I’m not sure what it is as far as is it today’s culture with violence being out there? Or is it people who are just not socially normed the same as I was? I don’t know. But people are quick to, it seems like increasingly so, quick to resort to violence to resolve their differences and increasingly so, weapons become part of that."
Kelsay says he doesn’t anticipate any charges coming out of the incident at this point.