I am contacting you in the hopes of putting out there another side to the issue. I think that the jumping to conclusions that everyone arrested was responsible for what went down is unfortunate. I was one of the individuals arrested - and I would like to put that side of the story out there. My name is Dylan Whitman and I was arrested for allegedly "inciting a riot." When I was arrested, it was after everything had calmed down and I was sitting on the sea-wall watching our ice chest and other beach items with a friend while other friends went to pick up our car. A police officer came up and grabbed me and arrested me, while I was sitting quietly. He wouldn't inform me what I was being arrested for, and my friend asked what was going on and he told her to go away. I was sober and had not thrown anything or caused any problems or assaulted any police officers so the only thing they had to charge me with was "inciting a riot." I was not explained what I allegedly do to do that, and it will be interesting to see what story they (the police) come up with. I am working with an attorney to hopefully get the charges dropped. I am a San Diego local myself and it is unfortunate when the police go out there and start grabbing people and arresting them because they are near a bunch of drunk idiots who are throwing things at them. I hope that people realize that while there were definitely a lot of idiots out there, you also shouldn't assume that just because someone was arrested they did something. Many of the eyewitness accounts on FreePB.org said that people were getting in trouble when they weren't even doing anything wrong.

I am writing with an eyewitness account about the incident on Labor Day. Myself and several of my friends saw the entire event from start to finish. First of all, the so-called "riot" did not begin because of a drunken brawl on the beach like many of the news sources are reporting. There were a group of college-aged kids with a slip-and-slide set up that had attracted a crowd. However, the crowd was simply cheering and having fun. A few cops came by on their four wheelers to break up the crowd and stop the use of the slip and slide. No one was arguing with the cops at this point and everyone seemed to be compliant. While this was occurring, a random guy was pushing the cop's four-wheeler towards the ocean. The cops eventually reprimanded him and I believe he was arrested. The guy's friends began shouting at the cops and were throwing bottles and sand at them. The cops were pepper spraying them and arresting them. At this point more police became involved, thus attracting an even larger crowd. If the cops had simply arrested the rowdy individuals and had continued about their duties in a regular fashion, such a reaction would not have been provoked. It wasn't necessary for police in riot gear and helicopters to arrive at the scene. The whole scenario was blown out of proportion. The appearance of a "riot" was simply due to the mass of spectators watching a confrontation between several cops and a handful of rowdy individuals. There was not a riot. No one was seriously injured. I don't see the sense in restricting thousands of law-abiding citizens because of the misbehavior of a handful of people.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions or need more information.

I was present on Monday as the events started. My friend and I were on the beach at the spot where the police ATV was pulled out of the water by a guy, who was completely cooperative during his arrest. Obviously a large crowd started to form as his arrest became known to those in the area on the beach. Some began to boo, and those that were disrespectful threw sand and some cans at the cops. The crowd grew larger and the police became more irate. I have some of this on video, which you can watch on YouTube.

I eventually turned my camera off, but just as I did so the police went after several people with pepper spray. This caused mass chaos....and I immediately left the area and headed north on the beach. I honestly believe if the police left the scene after the arrest and did not use the pepper spray the situation would not have escalated to what we know is called the "PB Riot". All I know is that after I left the scene even more chaos erupted and what I see on the news is so shocking. I honestly believe both the disrespectful drunks who chose to piss off the cops are to blame, as well as the police who appeared to enrage the crowd even more by using pepper spray.

I was in PB when the disturbance occured on Labor Day. I was standing outside of World Famous on PB Drive. I saw a crowd gathering and went to see what was happening. I witnessed lifeguards and police officers chasing one man around the beach. He jumped the sea wall and ran out into the parking lot (the west end of PD Drive). The cops caught up with him, tackled him, and appeared to mace the individual. He was then taken into custody. The crowd lingered for a while, but nothing else happened. It was one guy getting chased by the cops. That's it. It just looked worse because so many on-lookers gathered to see what was happening.

Just to start I saw EVERYTHING that happened during the first 25 minutes or so of the event. I was sitting in my beach chair enjoying the day at the beach which had otherwise been pretty mellow. The slipping slide people had had their slipping slide out for about 4 hours, which I didn't think was really that big of a deal. It got a little rowdy over there at one point in time (about 30 minutes before the cops showed up) when a bunch of people were sliding down it and a big group of guys was chanting "we want boobs". I went over there and checked it out for a little bit, no big deal. About 30 minutes later an office rolled up in his quad and went over to talk to those guys, probably to tell them they couldn't have the slide. While he was over there, some joker ran over and pushed the quad toward the water about 5 ft. The quad was already too close to the water, so the waves started washing up underneath and moving it around a bit (this was happening about 20 ft in front of me while I was sitting in my beach chair) Another guy who was just walking by, saw the officers quad in the water, he didn't know the first guy who originally touched it as far as I could tell. He decided to be a good citizen and grabbed the back of the quad and pushed it up out of the water onto dry sand. I don't know if the cop didn't see any of this or what, but he came over right as the guy had finished pushing his quad up to the high tide line. As the office walked up, to our surprise, he grabbed the guy who had pushed the quad out of the water and twisted his arm behind his back and cuffed him. By this time a large number of people were watching. Everyone started booing and yelling that this was a wrongful arrest, and the guy had done nothing wrong. This is when things started getting carried away, sand and beer cans started flying into the center where the officer was standing, at this point it was getting hard to see so I stood up to watch, there was another cop in the middle of the crowd at this time as well. I saw the first officer who had arrested the guy pull out his radio and call for backup. Within a minute about 10 - 12 other cops came running into the middle of the circle that had formed, a police SUV drove up as well and they started tossing people in, and a news helicopter began to circle. Sand and beer cans were still being thrown from the outskirts of the crowd. Once the 12 additional cops arrived they formed a circle and without warning began pepper spraying people, I saw tasers out as well but I didn't see anyone actually get hit with a taser. I started to pack up my stuff and told my girlfriend, my other friend Matt and his girlfriend that is was time to go cause the situation was getting too crazy. That's when a cop ran by and pepper sprayed the 4 of us, even my girlfriend who was still sitting in her chair got sprayed. I saw women, and men being sprayed directly in their eyes and faces without questions asked, including people just walking by near the water and people just getting out of the water. At one point an office that was standing near us got hit directly in his helmet, I saw him unholster what looked like his gun and began walking in the direction the can came from. There were men and women being tackled and slammed in the sand and arrested all over the place. With all the people getting sprayed, the crowd began to get even more fired up. This is when even more beer cans, and bottles (the plastic kind I might add) began flying from all directions. The cops then began sprinting into the crowds of people chasing down individuals who they though were throwing stuff, several of these people I saw running away and resisting arrest. As these small bands of cops went off chasing people the crowd followed, that's when the ruckus moved away from where we were sitting. That's when we packed up our stuff and headed toward the boardwalk, I saw all the cops eventually run out of the crowd and to the board walk, to wait for backup im assuming, they all stood there in a line as the crowd continued to throw cans and other objects. As I reached the boardwalk (about 50 yards down from where the cops were all standing in a line on the boardwalk) I noticed smoke and gas coming up from the beach. The police helicopter was circling too, telling everyone to leave the sand or they would be arrested on site. At some point some people in the crowd turned on themselves and began fighting although I personally didn't see anyone fighting. Then I left the beach.

I just think its funny they would call this a beach riot, I also have had my eyes opened just to how the local news and other news agencies twist the truth and portray these kinds of stories however they want. Especially when they say the police were "attacked" as they innocently tried to break up a beach brawl involving "scores" or people, while the truth is the only time there were people fighting was at the very end while all the cops were standing on the seawall and did absolutely nothing (except shoot tear gas onto the beach of course).

In my opinion the whole situation started around the wrongful arrest of a man simply trying to help a police quad out of the water. Had the cop simply taken him aside and found out what the situation was, rather than immediately treating him like a criminal, I don't think people would have gotten so angry. From there it snowballed into an out of control scene. I don't believe it was a riot, I think the police could have handled the situation better and not resorted to the means the did so quickly. I feel that some of them aren't trained for situation where there are crowds of thousands of people, and they don't know how to react when something like this happens. At the same time the crowd did get out of control and shouldn't have been throwing all that stuff at the cops. All in all it was a huge mess, and I hope we don't lose our drinking privileges because of it.

Hope this helped,

I was an innocent bystander that was actually quite disgusted with how the whole event played out and how the crowd responded to police action. I would like to begin by saying that the cops should have definately let the entire crowd of people alone and by knowing what could happened they should have done their utmost to stay out of the mess in the first place.

I am very unclear to how the whole thing started, rumors have stated it was a fight, and others have stated it was a slip and slide that the cops tried to stop, but either way what continued on for the next hour was a bit over the top.

Once the cops had initially slowed the crowd down and it appeared things were starting to quell the cops started attacking various innocent bystanders. Screaming at people to get back and threatening them with mace and batons. One cop yelled at a few of us to get back which we did and one individual actually started moving back but apparently not as fast as the cop wanted to, the cop proceeded to shove the individual on the ground and after the guy had rolled the guy ran at him grabbed him as if the guy had done something wrong then pretty much dragged him to the center of the ruckus. I am all for allowing cops to do their work if threatened but this is one of the first incidences in my life that I witnessed a cop pretty much use excessive force on an individual. This same cop then proceeded to get trigger happy with the mace and started spraying it all over at people. There were various people around who were yelling that this cop was trigger happy and to watch out for him. The cop's name was Lt. Vinison, and the only reason I looked for his name because I felt he was creating more rage and anger among the crowd.

Various cops were over-reacting which definately fueled the fire. The crowd turned on the cops at which time bottles and cups of sand were thrown at the cops. There were many cops I witnessed that were very respectful of the crowd and actually stayed calm whereas a handfull kept making things worse. Any time police start grabbing individuals after a day of alcohol and sun things are obviously going to get worse. Well it appeared the crowd was sick of seeing what they saw and forced the cops off the beach. The items being thrown at the cops continued over the next while. One female cop it looked like started shooting paintballs at the crowd and whether she hit someone or nothing came out I know not.

The cops believe they gave fair warning for the crowd to disperse and they did this from the police helicopter above the crowd but you could barely hear what they were saying.