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A police officer and 11 onlookers were injured Saturday when the officer lost control of his motorcycle and veered into the crowd during the Palm Springs, California Festival of Lights Parade. The officer and two parade attendees remain hospitalized with serious injuries. The officer hurt his wrist badly but is expected to recover, according to The Palm Springs Post.
What exactly happened remains unclear. While social media videos exist of the accident, we’ve only seen angles depicting the collision itself, rather than the actions that precipitated it. According to Police Chief Andy Mills, officers were both providing crowd control services and performing “demonstrations” for the crowd during the parade when one of them slipped off the peg of his bike, grabbed the handle, and accidentally opened the throttle, accelerating into bystanders.
However, Mills has also acknowledged reports from onlookers indicating that some of the officers were performing stunts, including clutch pops and some mild wheelies. More damning than that, however, is the fact that the front end of the officer’s motorcycle can be seen lifting off the ground shortly before the crash, roughly 16 seconds into the footage below.
“I am aware of social media accounts containing video of the accident,” Mills said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “There is also video of officers demonstrating traffic control maneuvers. All of the video available to us will be analyzed and included in the investigation conducted by the California Highway Patrol,” he said.
“Once I have a full understanding of what took place, what caused the accident, and what we could have done differently, I will report back to the community our findings. I appreciate the overwhelming support from Palm Springs.”
Mills told the Desert Sun that there’s no place for unsafe behavior in the parade, whether it is tradition or not.
“[E]ven though this may have been done for years, if it’s something that puts the community in any kind of jeopardy, I want to make sure that we’re not doing that,” he said.
Further compounding the controversy, parade organizers elected to continue with the festivities despite the incident. He called the decision “cumulative,” but cited safety as the primary driver. Having to send 100,000 attendees home early would have only compounded the problem, he contended.
The officer and the injured parade-goers are all expected to recover.
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