Story Archive

Hurt-Mor

Miguel Sanders says things were going fine at his roller rink, Mig’s Pla-Mor. There were 250 young people inside for an end-of-term party — the venue’s capacity is 440 — and hundreds more were lined up outside. But then Euclid, Ohio, cops and firefighters arrived. “Euclid police, along with the fire department, basically stormed into the building like a SWAT unit,” Sanders says. A cop told waiting kids that only 100 more would be allowed to enter, whereupon they tried to shove their way to the front. The police subdued that with pepper spray. Authorities initially delayed responding to a reporter’s inquiry, then filed papers trying to get Mig’s Pla-Mor shut down as a nuisance. They also claimed that they’d shut the event when it reached the venue’s capacity, and that the pepper spray was an appropriate response to a “dangerous” situation in which people the police had stopped from partying were allegedly fighting. (AC/WKYC Cleveland) ...What danger was there before the police showed up?