Two men are in custody after multiple officers were injured, one seriously, during a fight on Pier Plaza early last Saturday morning.
The incident began about 1:30 a.m. Nov. 5, after Hermosa Beach Police Department officers broke up a fight outside Patrick Malloy’s, according to two employees at Pier Plaza restaurants. At least two people were sitting down, talking to the officers, and they were not restrained in handcuffs.
Suddenly, one of the men sitting on the the plaza got up and ran west toward Hermosa Avenue, one of the employees said. The suspect was a fast runner and was initially able to run away from the cops, but was apprehended shortly after turning left at the intersection.
Back on the plaza, another one of the men that the officers had been talking with pushed one of the officers while the officer was in pursuit, according to HBPD Sgt. Robert Higgins.
“One of his friends stood up and and shoved [the officer] hard while he was in a full sprint,” Higgins said.
The officer fractured his elbow, sprained his wrist, and sustained a bruise to the face and several scrapes in the fall, according to an email from Capt. Milton McKinnon to Hermosa City Council Members.
In the midst of the pursuit and the officer’s fall, a large crowd of patrons from surrounding restaurants gathered and began jeering at police officers, one of the tavern employees said. Some of the patrons were filming the police officers with cell phones.
The officers shouted at the patrons to go home, and became hostile according to McKinnon. This prompted the officers on scene to call for backup from departments in neighboring Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach.
“Officers were on the scene, but it was just chaos. When these things go down it generally is chaos anyway,” Higgins said.
In addition to charges related to the scuffle that began the encounter, the man who fled and the man who pushed were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer, Higgins said. Along with the officer who suffered a fractured elbow, one scraped his hand against a wall, and another was injured when on of the suspects fell on him.
Officers came by some of the restaurants on Pier Plaza the next day asking for footage from security cameras, one of the employees said. Detectives are reviewing footage they obtained, and were seeking increased bail for the suspects, according to the e-mail from McKinnon.
