CLEVELAND, July 27 (UPI) -- A police officer was filmed using pepper spray on a crowd of activists Sunday afternoon near Ohio's Cleveland State University.
The incident unfolded after police removed an allegedly intoxicated 14-year-old from a bus, according to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. Officials were preparing to transport him to a police station.
The Black Lives Matter national conference was being held on the downtown campus of Cleveland State University and it ended just as the teenager was being apprehended. The conference comes after the nationwide controversy following the death of Sandra Bland -- the woman who died in a Texas jail cell following a traffic stop on July 13.
"Folks were asking what is going on? Why are you trying to arrest this young man? All of us just saw what happened to Sandra Bland in Texas so forgive us if we are a little concerned," Edward Little, a criminal and juvenile justice consultant, told WKYC-TV Cleveland.
Related
More officers and more activists arrived on the scene as tempers began to escalate. Activists began to lock arms and several streets began to close.
One police officer was filmed using pepper spray on a crowd of activists, which caused tensions to rise further.
"They begin to form a barricade around the car urging the police to let the young man go but they wouldn't and when they were linking arms and doing chants one of the police officers began pepper spraying the whole line," conference attendee Destinee Henton told WKYC-TV. "They were on the ground covering their faces. He was still spraying them toward the ground so that's when more people started coming out."
The 14-year-old was treated by emergency medical technicians who arrived on the scene and he was later released to his mother, who drove away following cheers from the crowd of activists.
