As investigators continue their probe into a brawl between girls that erupted after this past weekend?s City-Poly football game, Baltimore schools Police Chief Toby Goodwin laments the growing number of female students fighting.
“You do see a rise in female altercations around the school system and the city as well,” he said, noting that fights between girls can be vicious, including the one Saturday afternoon at M & T Bank Stadium.
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“There were earrings and hair [pieces] on the ground.I feel sorry for the girl who got hit in the head. Her face had swollen up like a softball.”
After they identify the students involved in the fight after the Baltimore City College-Polytechnic Institute game Saturday, school police and officials want to organize a mediation session to mitigate the disagreements and to prevent further violence.
“I wanted to bring them together,” Goodwin said. “We believe it?s over a boy. We just don?t know who the main parties are.”
Goodwin said city police arrested 22 girls from seven or eight schools from Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
Mayor Sheila Dixon commented on the fight for the first time Tuesday.
“It is unacceptable behavior,” said Dixon, criticizing parents who accused school officials of not acting soon enough to quell tensions between the girls. “Parents need to intervene and children need to behave responsibly.”
City College Principal Timothy Dawson referred a call to a system spokeswoman, but Poly Principal Barney Wilson acknowledged earlier this week that he had known about an ongoing dispute between the girls.
“It was a school event so they have to face consequences, suspensions and parent meetings,” Wilson said.
Andre Bundley, an intervention manager for the school system, called the melee “a teachable moment.”
“We say that going forward, we don?t put our young people in a position where, particularly in a place like Baltimore, there is gangbanging … that this fight, while not as serious, won?t happen,” he said.
“It?s part of the same continuum.”
