Hey, there! Log in / Register
Police use pepper spray to break up large crowd at Cambridgeside Galleria
By adamg on Mon, 11/07/2016 - 7:47pm
Woman in handcuffs at Lechmere around 7:30. Photo by Andy Metzger.
Something like 1,000 people showed up at the Champs Sports Store around 5:30 p.m. to meet Celtics player Jaylen Brown and rapper Desiigner and something got out of hand. Cambridge, MIT, Boston and State Police all showed up.
Jackie Geilfuss reports she was on an EZ Ride bus that got caught in the crowds and police outside the mall:
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Does the mall have a maximum capacity?
Should they have turned people away beyond that?
Man - that's crazier than Market Basket the day before the 2013 Blizzard!
Good publicity for the store, the celebrities, the mall
They have an incentive for there to be a noisy crowd.
Kids want to be countercultural. Everyone wants the kids' money.
Counterculture
Funny how every counterculture keeps getting turned into yet another corporate marketing target, brands, images. If it wasn't corporate-manufactured to begin with.
By the time kids really figure this out, they have their own mortgages to pay, and they might just turn around and exploit the next generation of kids.
to begin with
I'll go with "to begin with," snuggles.
This is a #1 rap musician who sings about luxury cars, and a professional sports player. There's nothing vaguely countercultural about either. They're both major corporate entertainment products, and no more counter-cultural than Tom Brady or Britney Spears. They just address a different market, that's all.
It's countercultural
to affluent suburban white kids who are sad because they can't be urban badasses. But they do have disposable income, for the merchandising of authentic urban badasses.
Surely the maximum capacity is more than 1000 people
I'm not sure 1000 people would even fill the food court.
Yes, I think so
It's not a giant mall, but it's pretty big. I first went there when my 12-year-old son said he needed to participate in a "Pokemon tournament at the galleria in Cambridge". On a rainy winter day, my wife, my son and I took the T to Lechmere, and went looking for the tournament. It did not seem to be at that mall. Someone suggested maybe it was at another Galleria in Cambridge, so we walked to that one. Turns out there were FOUR "Gallerias" in Cambridge, and we walked to all of them. In the rain. None of them had any evidence of a Poketournament. Maybe he had the date wrong.
Four Gallerias in Cambridge?
The only other one I know of is the Crimson Galeria (one "l") on JFK Street in Harvard Square, which at this point is probably best known as the location of a Staples store.
At this point
My then-12-year-old son is now 26. I may be misremembering the exact number of the Gallerias, but there were at least three of them. I didn't care how many 'l's there were in the names, because all I had was a verbal designation.
Two things
Mall Capacity and Store Capacity. Different numbers.
Has there been any word on
Has there been any word on what started the incident? Was it just a mass of humanity getting impatient and pushing itself around, as is the nature of unmonitored crowds?
I've been hearing that an
I've been hearing that an officer pepper sprayed a massive crowd because they wanted them to get back, I am not sure how you have 1k ppl in line without some order. Footage should be coming soon
I work right next to the
I work right next to the Galleria and left at about 6:15.
It was obvious something was going on... there were a lot of teens hanging out on the back tables outside and there was a real buzz. There was an ambulance nearby, but they weren't evacuating the mall completely.There were plenty of people in the food court.
And then... boom... all the kids started running away from the mall. I couldn't tell what it was that made them all run. I'll admit I thought it was an organized shoplifting mob as I saw some security tagged merchandise on the tables outside. And I heard at least one youth talking about others stealing as I headed over to my bus.
But sounds like most of this action was triggered by whatever happened at the event inside.
cambridgeside galleria
enter at your own risk.
Most times?
Not a problem. My young men go there all the time.
Seriously?
I work in the same building and park in the Galleria parking garage, so I walk through the mall twice a day. This is the first even vaguely dangerous thing I've seen or heard of in two years. It's not 1982 anymore. Kendall Square is yuppie central. This sounds like a store underestimated turnout and didn't hire enough security for crowd control. If they were on the other side of the river, the ISD would be convening the Inquisition now.
Hatch Shell
Maybe we could get this Desiigner guy to open for Green Day at the Hatch Shell!! WBCN!
green day show was wfnx
i was right up front. staties were cracking skulls.
Yup
my husband was crowd surfing and got tossed over the barriers.
I didn't know him at the time and was on my way (late) to the show when we came upon the crowds leaving the area. Felt like salmon swimming upstream. So my friend and I turned around and found something else to do that afternoon.