Here is the video that’s exploding all over the internets showing a Washington D.C. cop bringing a gun to a snowball fight.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

44 replies on “Gun vs. Snowballs”

  3. @2: right on, especially when it’s a mob of armed samurai who believe their life’s work consists of imposing their own narrow view of morality and civility upon the the rest of us.

  6. I’d like to set up a laser beam atop the Washington Monument and pick those whining hipsters off one-by-one.

    “Go to Jesus, my child!” The grin on my face visible in the bright burst of deadly green light…

  8. The hipsters are assholes, Hummer drivers are assholes, and DC cops are famous for being extra-assholian, even on cop standards.

    Just make your choice.

  9. I mean, yeah, that cop was a dick and out of line. What would possess you to pull a gun on a bunch of stupid college kids having a snowball fight? HOWEVER! Way to be the biggest tools possible, snowball kids.

  14. Haha, that guy was so bent out of shape – he should of kept on moving. What results did that grinch expect from brandishing his gun to a bunch of college students? He deserves to have lots of snow balls thrown at him!

  15. I’m so used to cowering in fear whenever a cop approaches me, its SOOOO refreshing to see people not give a shit. This is the most adorable show of dissent i’ve ever witnessed. totally made my day.

  17. I think it’s interesting that the black police officer has to wait for the white police officer to show up to talk to the white hipsters. The cops are assholes but the hipsters are worse. “Kidnapping” one guy says as the cop tells him to get out of the street.

  18. Somebody won’t be a detective in 2010!

    Hope he doesn’t have kids, or they’ll never hear the end of it at school.

    Actually, I hope he doesn’t reproduce at all. Fuckin’ bully.

  19. I’d say the cop is much worse than the hipsters. Pulling a gun on people throwing snowballs? Seriously?

    The kids were being dicks, and the guy who threw the snowball at the cop after the gun was out? Darwin Award in the making right there. But they were throwing snowballs, not waving a gun around.

  20. Yeah, I know you all hate hipsters and their attitude but a police officer has an unofficial duty to be bigger, better person under pressure.

    Has anyone read the story about the EMTs who, while on break, failed to help a pregnant woman who collapsed? She and her unborn baby both died. I’m not sure how to link to it properly, but it’s a story that’s making the rounds.

    I don’t think we need police officers waving around their guns because of a snowball fight, regardless of what kind of (unarmed) assholes the kids were being. They’re supposed to be better than us, they’re supposed to protect us from real danger.

  23. @ 19, What are you talking about, he wasn’t in uniform? And he didn’t start talking to them when the uniformed cops arrived, he elevated his maltreatment. Pulling out a gun and barking at kids for throwing snowballs is an abuse of power.

    The other officers looked kind of embarressed.

  28. Come on, you guys. This cop was way the hell out of line. They’re fucking snowballs, for christ’s sake.

    Hope he enjoys unemployment.

  29. @ 29 yeah, I know lots of other people who do that, but not these kids. They were pretty intent to keep throwing snowballs. That’s the funniest part to me. I don’t know why that cop didn’t go away or throw snow back.

  30. a lot of you guys are calling these…well, i can only guess that they’re college students, hipsters? they’re a bunch of people in winter gear who look college aged. what makes them hipsters? my guess is that many of you posting would classify as “hipsters” if we went by your strict standards. if you’re so quick to call someone out on being a hipster, you kinda come across as an elitist, which by the way some of you talk, suggests that you’re hipster…

    no matter what these kids were doing, pulling a GUN? yeah. that’s not cool. i’m actually really impressed that they didn’t freak out more on him. could you imagine that shit happening in Olympia? the Greener’s would burn the city down!

  32. the guys who threw the additional snowballs at the cop weren’t hipsters, unless black guys in DC are hipsters – which i suppose they could be. but they clearly knew enough to get the fuck out of dodge when the patrols showed up, leaving the hipsters to “nut up” and get shoved around for the heinous crime of stepping into the street in the middle of a snow emergency. bailer lost his cool and acted like a thug.

  35. I don’t know what a “hipster” is. Maybe it’s American argot. Anyway, I’m amazed by the reaction to this post. What was dick-ish about the “kids'” behaviour exactly? A bit of old fashioned tom foolery never hurt anyone, until some fucking nazi pulls a fucking gun out. Then all they were doing was exposing his fuckwitedness. Pretty funny if you ask me.

  36. Ps. The other amazing thing to me about this video was the snow! Having seen snow once in my life when I was 16, I can’t believe the streets actually look like that?

  37. Did anyone else get the sense that detective baylor might have been drinking? He seemed a little, uhm, unsteady out there physically.

  38. Haha — “To Protect and Serve.” What a joke. I agree with the poster who said it’s a nice change to see people not cower in fear at the site of cops. It’s a sad commentary on our society and the state of law enforcement that we’re ordinarily so conditioned to immediately flee the scene at the first site of cops.

    The book “Rage” (essentially the biography of Huey Newton & his founding of the Black Panthers — highly recommended book, btw) tells that when they were founding the group it was in an effort to establish themselves as “Peace Officers” and redefine the way people perceive cops and the establishment. Regardless of how it turned out, they were definitely on to something and it’s a shame they weren’t more successful in their efforts.

  39. @38 It’s annoying to throw snowballs at passing cars, and it’s dickish to throw a snowball at someone you don’t know. Period. I’m not a “grinch” for not wanting a random asshole to pelt me in the ear with a stinging cold ball of snow and ice. Throwing a snowball at a person you know pretty well? That’s different. These kids? Entitled douches.

    That said, the cop was being a bit overly assholish. I think it was stupid to get out of the car to yell at them rather than just moving on, and even then I personally would’ve only yelled that them. Also, hitting someone with a snowball can be construed as assault, particularly if that someone is a cop.

  40. @42, Ok I’ll happily stand corrected on this one, given my lack of familiarity with snow, snowballs and snowball throwing. I just assumed that they were having a snowball fight amongst themselves and the cop was collateral damage. Please pardon my cultural ignorance.

    Having said that, a bit of good natured irreverence towards authority always brings a smile to my face.

  42. Look at that, we made it all the way to the West Coast. This particular snowball fight was organized flash-mob style. I actually know several people who attended at various points (it went on for a LONG time). The area around 14th and U, where the battle took place, is pretty hipster-ish. Lots of interesting bars, head shops, new condo developments, young yuppies, and the remnants of an area that, less than 10 years ago, was a gang war zone, and a racial war zone before that.

    I didn’t watch this particular video, but I’ve seen most of them. Before this incident, a cop car got stuck in the snow, and the snowballers helped push him out. He actually TOLD them to go back to their snowball fight once they helped. Another cop did ask them to cut it out, but gave up when they wouldn’t. The city was under a snow emergency, and unless Det. Baylor had some official duties going on, he shouldn’t have been on the road anyway. By this point, traffic was moving at the grand speed of MAYBE 10 MPH on the best stretches of road, so it’s not like he couldn’t have seen the festivities as he approached and taken a different route if it upset him that much to have a snowball tossed at him. Also, other motorists were taunting the snowballers into throwing at their cars, so everyone driving by got pelted as a result.

    Bottom line: the detective pulled a dick move and deserves to be punished. Perhaps the snowball fight should have taken place elsewhere (like the park up the street), but I’m not going to say that my neighbors and I didn’t head out and toss a few snowballs with the neighborhood kids ourselves. The count in our yard was 18″ by the time it stopped snowing, that much snow means that there should be no traffic except emergency vehicles and…well, the streets become a playground at that point. We live on a little hill and a bunch of us adults actually stood at the top to watch out for any traffic there might be so the kids could sled at one point.

    It hardly ever snows here. Can’t we just enjoy it?

  43. Yeah, those brothas in fleeces and skull caps along with that 30 something white woman asking how to spell Baylor are really hipsters, right? Fools. You see one guy with thick framed glasses getting confrontational with the police and they all magically are hipsters? In fact, I didn’t see one fixie on skies or pair of tight jeans. Come on slogsters. Get it together!

  44. They were in the wrong for being (ostensibly) fully adult human males and females who decided to throw snowballs into traffic. He was in the wrong for pulling out his gun without even attempting (as far as the video had recorded) to tell the snowball throwers that he was a cop.

    He was in the right because a few snowballs across the wrong windshield would have been enough to panic or disorient someone and send hid or her driving *through* the crowd of snowball throwers (this I can attest to from experience, as I was the type of kid who threw snowballs across busy streets when I was 8 years old and not a grown man.)

    They were in the right because of some reason that would jibe with my idea of them being emotionally immature and self-centered idiots who weren’t raised properly if at all, but their inability to rationalize that throwing *anything* at moving vehicles when the road conditions were that bad is obviously society’s fault or their parents’ fault. After all, what could *possibly* go wrong with throwing shit at people who you don’t know who are also piloting multi-ton weighing machines, amirite?

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