BY ALEXANDER ROLLE

In print | Published April 9, 2009

Early morning on Sunday, April 5, a Swarthmore student walking home from the Genderfuck Party was given a citation by the Borough Police for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The student, identified as a 22-year-old white male in the incident report, was stopped on North Chester Road and brought to the Swarthmore police station to wait for Public Safety. According to the report, Public Safety was then called to transport him back to his residence.

According to Swarthmore Police Chief Brian Craig, Springfield police officer Sean Clifton found the student, who was wearing a dress, in the company of others walking on North Chester Road. “He was in the middle of the highway and he wouldn’t get out of the highway,” Craig said. The Springfield officer detained the student until a member of the Swarthmore police department arrived.

According to the incident report, “Upon arrival [Roger Hinckley, the Swarthmore officer who responded to the call] did observe Officer Clifton attempting to secure the subject who was combative. [He] then assisted in placing the subject on the ground and securing him with handcuffs … In speaking with both the officers on location and his friends, [the student] was loud and yelling profanities.”

However, the student gave a different account of the incident. He stated that he was walking on the sidewalk when the officers first detained him, though he said that he had been walking in the street prior to their arrival. He claims that the officers assaulted him. “After being taken off of the sidewalk, a third police car pulled up: another officer emerged and immediately placed a boot on my neck, while I was face down and handcuffed, without knowing anything about what had been going on,” he said in an e-mail to The Phoenix.

Though the student was not breathalyzed, according to Craig, police protocol does not require the use of a breathalyzer when issuing a citation for public drunkenness.

While most students who are given citations for public drunkenness are not brought to the police station, Chief Craig stated that the student was detained for his own safety, and that he was brought to the station to wait for Swarthmore Public Safety, who transported him back to his residence. “He was brought into the station because of the way he was behaving,” said Craig. “Our main concern was his safety.”

However, the student believed that his “status as a partying college student in a dress … influenced the officer’s unfortunate handling of the situation.”

Craig, though, denied that the student’s dress made him a target.

“He was in the company of other people who were similarly attired, but that’s not why he was stopped,” he said.

The student said that he is considering “the best way to take action against the Swarthmore and Springfield Police.”

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