SALISBURY, Md. - A series of videos had been circulating online showing brutal violence taking place between dozens of teenagers in the city of Salisbury. The videos were collectively posted to Youtube and titled "Hood Fight Salisbury," and were numbered one through 27.
The videos contained fights between boys and girls who were punching, kicking, and pulling each others hair. There is no denying fights between teens was taking place long before people started filming them with a cell phone, but now technology has made it easy for people to watch and see just how violent some of the fighting can be. The "Hood Fight Salisbury" videos are something Salisbury Mayor Jim Ireton said he and the police department know all about.
"It is hard to watch on streets that I know like the back of my hand. It's hard to be able to see residences in the back of the picture of people who I know that live there. Black, white, rich, poor, Asian, Haitian, Creole, they're sick of this violence in their neighborhoods and we're hearing it all over the place," said Ireton.
Many of the videos show more than just two people fighting. Various videos have a crowd of people around the fighters cheering them on. Reverend Lewis Watson of First Baptist Church is a local community leader and said the fights and videos are feeding into a culture of violence.
"They emulate what they see. For whatever reason, they want to be like the generation or the persons that are older than them and they want to carry out those same behaviors. It's like a copycat situation for them," said Watson.
And whether the fights are real, staged, or agreed upon between the participants, the fighters can still get into some trouble. Wicomico County State's Attorney Matt Maciarello told WBOC fighting like what is depicted in the videos, to the disturbance of others, is a crime called affray. Maciarello also said two juveniles involved in these fights have been charged.
"What I'm going to do is I am going to send my officers out when a crime is being committed. I am going to send my officers out when neighbors call and say I don't want this junk on my street. I am going to take this opportunity to say to you that parents need to step up," said Mayor Ireton.
And Reverend Watson believed the community can step up as well.
"I feel that if we could just come together and perhaps open up our schools or our auditoriums. Whichever churches have the space for that, that might help. As long as it's a controlled environment," Watson said.
Since the story aired on WBOC, the "Hood Fight Videos" have been removed by the original poster on Youtube.
