
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990                   TAG: 9005200205
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                LENGTH: Short

CITY DOWNPLAYS BEACH INCIDENT

There was no connection between a beachfront crowd pelting two police officers with cans and bottles and last year's Labor Day weekend violence, one official of the resort city said.

"It's got nothing to do with Labor Day. It's kids not thinking," C. Oral Lambert Jr., the city's public works director and a leading coordinator of this year's Labor Day activities, said after Friday's disturbance.

"The thing that worries me, now every time a black person does something, there's going to be an natural inclination to tie it to Labor Day. And that's wrong. These kinds of things have been going on forever."

Neither officer was injured in Friday's disturbance, and the crowd dispersed as additional officers arrived, police spokesman Lewis Thurston said. There were no arrests.

Thurston said a group of 200 to 250 young people gathered on the beachfront around 1 p.m. when the people were spotted by an officer answering a public intoxication complaint.

According to Thurston, the officer called for assistance and when a second officer riding an all-terrain vehicle approached the crowd, the officer was hit by a bag of ice.

The first officer came to the assistance of the second and both were pelted by cans and bottles thrown from the crowd of black youths in their late teens and early 20s, Thurston said. The crowd overturned the all-terrain vehicle.

"I guess they were partying and there was a lot of beer there," Thurston said. "It was a group of people having a party, and it got out of hand. . . . This could have happened any day of the summer."

by CNB