I saw the whole thing happen. I sit in the Letterwinners club inside on the first row. The student section in the north stands is just below my seats. There were a number of people who were not students sitting in the row below. Two white Georgia Tech police officers came into that area and asked everyone who was not a student to leave the area. Everyone did except a black woman and two young black men (teenagers). Both of them were wearing recruit lanyards. One of them immediately moved his tag to his back where the officer could not see it. The officers approached and asked them to move. There were some ensuing verbal exchanges that I could not hear. All three seemed to be getting more and more hostile. The officers appeared to remain calm. The two recruits began leaving but the woman stayed. The recruits then returned. One officer asked for identification. One of the recruits got his ID out and held it in front of the officer. When the officer reached for it, he pulled it back and put his arm behind his back. There was a heated exchange between them and the officer grabbed the recruit's arm and tried to lead him away. The woman was having a fit. At that point a black officer approached and talked with the white officers who then left. The black officer talked for a while to the three people. He then led them out of the stands. The section for recruits is just across the aisle and all other recruits were sitting in that section. My thoughts were that the officers originally focused on no one. They simply asked all non-students to leave the section. Everyone else did. They only approached the recruits when they didn't move. They seemed to remain very calm in the face of escalating hostility. Things became a problem when the recruit decided to play hide and seek with his ID. The officer who interceded did the right thing to calm things down, otherwise the recruit would likely have been arrested. I saw nothing inappropriate on the officer's part no matter what race the recruits might have been. No one was profiled or singled out. The recruits singled themselves out by not doing what everyone else did when asked. They acted like entitled jerks and were solely responsible for what transpired. Personally, no matter how good they may be, I would not want to see that kind of person representing Georgia Tech whether black or white. Sorry for the length of this post, but I feel an eyewitness account was needed.
