Christian Wenande
June 5th, 2015

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The loud music and boisterous crowd made policing a challenge (photo: Dar Salim)

The first day of the Distortion street party in Copenhagen was a huge success in terms of order, according to City Police. The second day, however, was not as impressive.

That conclusion can be reached with some degree of confidence as a video has surfaced showing Distortion party-goers involved in a mass brawl barely 15 metres from two oblivious policemen taking selfies.

Actor Dar Salim was filming the party from a location overlooking Sønder Boulevard in Vesterbro when an altercation led to dozens of youngsters throwing hay-makers at one another while others can be seen desperately trying to quell the fighting.

Dar Salim then moved his camera slightly and captured two policemen amicably snapping selfies with other Distortion-goers less than a stone’s throw away.

Unfortunate timing
“I want to underline that it was a case of bad timing,” Salim told TV2 News. “Even though the policemen were close by, they had no chance of discovering the fighting with the music and so many people around.”

However, according to Salim, the music stopped and the brawlers were urged by the stage to stop fighting. The brawl lasted a minute or so.

No arrests were made as a result of the brawl, but police say that they arrested five people yesterday.

“Un-necessary brutality”
Already reports of violence, this time directly involving the police, are reaching the Copenhagen Post.

One eye-witness claims he was made to wait for five minutes on a cycle path on Ingerslevsgade (which runs parallel to Sonder Boulevard) just 200 metres from Enghave Station shortly before 11pm, where he witnessed “un-necessary brutality” by the police.

“The police had stopped a group of youths who couldn’t have been much older than 17 and placed them against the wire fence backing onto the train tracks,” revealed the eye-witness.

“They asked one of them to sit down but he refused, and for over a minute three officers wrestled with him, continuously kicking at his legs in a bid to make him fall. Meanwhile, without warning, other officers kicked away the legs of the youth’s friends to make them fall straight to the ground. When I was finally allowed to pass, the police were still wrestling with the youth, kicking him continuously.”