Fleming party makes headlines

What most likely started as a harmless party ended up making the headlines, as two Fanshawe students face charges after police were called in to deal with an out-of-hand crowd on Fleming Drive last Saturday.

“What we understand is, according to the police, there were several parties happening on Saturday in homes on Fleming Drive,” said Emily Marcoccia, Fanshawe's Manager of Marketing and Communications. “Evidently there was an amalgamating of parties and people gravitated towards one or two major addresses and there was some type of, what the police called, ‘aggressive behaviour' by the students.”

The aggressive behaviour mentioned by Marcoccia amounted to a group of students at a party hurling beer bottles at the responding officers and taunting them with shouts of ‘pig' when the police arrived.

After trying to break up the party in the early hours of September 9 without any success, London police called in backup. According to authorities, at one point an estimated 30 officers attempted to clear the students out of the area. By 1:30 a.m. incidents stemming from the party resulted in four arrests, two criminal charges, a handful of non-criminal charges, including breach of peace, and one Fanshawe student being tasered.

First-year Landscape Design student Chris Guerin, who has been charged with Breach of Peace and Resisting Arrest and was tasered, believes that, though he understands where the police were coming from, they may have handled the situation badly.

“I had some people up from home, and we were in my house drinking and we saw some twenty-odd cop cars roll up,” Guerin explained. “And of course there had to be a reason for it, so we decided to go take a walk down the street.”

From there the situation appears to have escalated.

According to Guerin, he was given contradictory instructions from two different police officers on hand; one who told him to continue walking, while a second told him to stop and wait. Then, according to Guerin, the first officer started yelling and approached him regarding not have listened to their instruction.

“I put my hands up in the air and then four cops put me to the ground and they started to kick and punch me in the back. My head hit the ground and that's when that occurred,” Guerin continued, pointing to a bruise above his left eye. “I pulled my hands from behind my back to put on my face, as a barrier between the ground and my head, and that's when they tasered me.”

According to London's Public Information Officer, Constable Amy Phillipo, the police were responding to some noise complaints calls on the Saturday night.

“We got some calls shortly before midnight,” Phillipo explained. “With a normal party call usually at least two officers respond depending on how many calls we've gotten about it.

“If there's somebody on the ground, unconscious, been struck with a beer bottle, we will respond code one, which means there will be a lot of officers in the area, they'll drop what they're doing, and they will all go.”

Overall, not a great night for anyone involved, and for some Fanshawe students it could mean the end of their career aspirations. Though the College has no authority off-campus when it comes to disciplining students, and despite it's proximity, Fleming Drive is not part of the campus, but a run-in with the police can put an end to a student's career in certain fields where a criminal record check is required.

“(Am I) surprised by the media's reaction, yes,” said Travis Mazereeuw, the FSU President. “Am I surprised by the allegations that the police were very aggressive or the fact that Fanshawe students were having a party, no.

“I'm not against kids going out and having a good time, but it's really up to the kids to drink responsibly and make [parties] restricted to people you know,” Mazereeuw continued. “Unfortunately there were some students with criminal charges laid; when something small turns into something big, students have now affected the rest of their career, and that's unfortunate.”

“Do [they] really recognize the consequences of [their] actions?” Marcoccia asked. “It may have been a good party, it may have been fun to gather with your friends, and you know what? We were all there, a lot of us went to college went to parties, so we're not so naive to think that parties won't occur in a neighbourhood that is full of Fanshawe students.

“But we do believe that they need to know the consequences of their actions.”

For Guerin, the fight doesn't end here. The student is retaining legal counsel and intends to fight the charges, and later hopes to file a civil suit against the London Police.

“I understand that they have to take action, but the way they took action was not the best,” Guerin explained. “I was on the sidewalk, didn't have a beer, wasn't totally intoxicated [and] I wasn't at the party. You can't just go and take it out on anybody, for them to paint us all with the same brush because some people on Fleming were throwing beer bottles at them is not right at all.”