Traffic citations, drunkenness among top crimes
Police filed 157 charges and made 56 arrests in Five Points during three nights over the weekend.
The top three offenses — traffic citations (68), possession of alcohol in public (23) and drunkenness (23) — together accounted for nearly three-quarters of the weekend’s incidents, according to data provided by the Columbia police department.
The weekend also saw more serious crimes, the data show. Officers responded to one assault, two weapons violations, one hit-and-run and two drunken driving incidents.
In total, the bulk of the action seemed to happen on Thursday night, as police issued 78 charges and made 22 arrests.
The report comes days after city officials held a pair of press conferences to quell concerns that crime in the hospitality district was getting out of hand — and to promise increased police presence.
Mayor Steve Benjamin and Police Chief Randy Scott said they’d focus, in part, on loitering, open container violations, drugs and drunken driving as they responded to a weekend of high-profile violent crimes.
But how last weekend stacks up to comparable weekends — in the fall with an away football game — isn’t clear, police spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons said; data from past years wasn’t immediately available, she said.
Aggravated assault: Another of the weekend’s incidents hasn’t seen charges yet, as investigators know little about a suspect in an alleged aggravated assault.
At around 1:45 a.m. Sunday, two men were walking across the street on the 800 block of Pavillion Street, near Island Tan and the back of a number of businesses, when two people yelled at them from a car, according to an incident report.
One of the men who was walking, a 22-year-old, turned around, and the two got out and approached him. One of them then hit his face with some unknown object, according to the report. When he looked up, he told police, the person was holding a small, silver pistol in his face, which he said he thought he was hit with.
An officer would later notice cuts on the victim and swelling on his bottom lip.
The victim, who had been drinking according to the report, then walked down Harden Street. He spoke with an officer, who told him to take a cab home because he was acting “belligerent and uncooperative,” the report said.
Little is known about the suspect, though. According to the report, the race, sex, age, ethnicity and hair color of the subject aren’t yet known, though he or she has blue eyes.
Brawl arrest: Police have arrested all three of the men they named as suspects in a Five Points brawl earlier this month, but they’re not ruling out more arrests yet.
Michael Jermel Kendrix, 21, is charged with second-degree assault and battery and was arrested in connection with the Sept. 23 incident, in which a man was allegedly kicked and punched in the head and chest by seven to 10 men early Sunday morning, according to an incident report.
Kendrix turned himself in at the Richland County Sheriff’s Office Sunday night, according to a release. He was released from the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center Monday afternoon.
Last week, at a Thursday press conference, Scott announced that investigators had identified three suspects in the alleged beating — Kendrix, Stanley McBride and John Cornelius Sumner, all 21-year-old students at Benedict College.
Each is charged with second-degree assault and battery; Sumner is being held on $50,000 bond, and McBride has since been released.
More arrests are possible, though, Timmons said, as the investigators look through leads and video footage of the incident, some of which circulated on Facebook.