Video is audio-NSFW.
Police arrested five individuals at a sideshow on Sunday — pepper-spraying at least one and seizing three cars in the process. The Chronicle reports that this all went down on the site of the former Candlestick Park with SFPD arriving on the scene around 5:40 p.m. Once there, according to the paper officers were met with a crowd of 50 to 65 people. Video of the incident posted to Instagram shows a shoving match between bystanders and police as well as several apparent arrests.
"With these sideshows, I know people think of them as harmless, but a lot of them escalate to more serious crimes,” SFPD Captain Raj Vaswani of the Bayview Police Station told the Chron. "We don’t want them to escalate. When people get excited or see someone or someone gets disrespected, and if you have guns in that mix, it can easily escalate.”
Captain Vaswani's concerns of weapons are not without merit, as sideshows in the past have led to gunfire.
Sunday's incident is not the only recent sideshow to have caught the attention of a Bay Area police department. It seems sideshow season is just kicking into gear and just last week video emerged of participants in an Oakland sideshow kicking and throwing bottles at a CHP cruiser. And then, of course, there are the at least two occasions when the Bay Bridge has been shut down by donut spinning drivers.
The person who posted the video to Instagram, who in the comments says he/she did not film the video, had some thoughts on the police's treatment of those at the event. "Dude was just parked," the poster writes. "That was unnecessary, especially that pepper spray!"
According to the Chron, five people were arrested Sunday for "suspicion of reckless driving, not carrying insurance, vandalizing a police cruiser and speeding or ignoring stop signs." They were later released.
Related: Video: Sideshow Attendees Kick And Throw Bottles At CHP Vehicle
Video: Sideshow Shuts Down Bay Bridge, Sparks CHP Investigation
Video: 50-Car Sideshow Shuts Down Bay Bridge (Again)
