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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

BPD reports abnormally mild Little 500 weekend

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Bloomington police experienced an abnormally mild Little 500 weekend this year, reporting 549 calls for service, 103 cases and 41 arrests between 12 a.m. Friday and noon Sunday.

“That’s a very quiet Little 5 for us,” Bloomington Police Department Capt. Steve Kellams said. “Especially with the warm weather, we really expected to get hammered.”

BPD averages about 300 calls for service on a typical day. This Little 500 weekend resulted in lighter volumes of police reports than a typical home football game weekend, Kellams said.

“I attribute that to good defense,” Kellams said. BPD was heavily staffed all weekend and had officers and detectives driving and walking through neighborhoods and outside the downtown bars every night.

The IU Police Department arrested 33 people during the weekend, IUPD Capt. Andy Stephenson said.

Despite the lighter call volumes, several sexual assaults and rapes were reported to BPD and IUPD. In addition to the two alleged rapes reported in the IDS from the weekend, another woman reported a sexual assault in the early hours of Sunday morning after going home from a bar with a man she knew.

No arrest has been made and BPD will continue to investigate the case, Kellams said.

The 23-year-old woman had been drinking at a bar all day Saturday with her girlfriends when she saw a man she knew, Kellams said. Later that day, her friends left, and she stayed behind at the bar with the 22-year-old man.

The woman’s friends later found her at the man’s house on the 500 block of East 7th Street. She was wearing his clothing, but neither the woman nor the man remembered anything that had happened between them, Kellams said.

The woman’s friend convinced her to go to IU Health Bloomington Hospital for a sexual assault nurse examination kit.

BPD arrived at the hospital to take the sexual assault report. Detectives plan to reach out to the woman again this week to seek out additional details or determine how she would like to proceed with the investigation, Kellams said.

Kellams could not confirm whether or not the two people involved were students, but due to the nature of the incident and the bar setting during Little 500, he said it is likely students were in some way involved with the case.

In a separate case, nearly a dozen drunken people were involved in a fight on Kirkwood Avenue between Grant and Dunn streets early morning Sunday that resulted in a stabbing and several alcohol-related arrests.

All of the 11 people involved were uncooperative with police, Kellams said, and officials were unable to make any arrests in connection with the stabbing itself.

However, at least four people were arrested on unrelated preliminary charges: One IU student faces a public intoxication charge, another IU student faces public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges, and a non-IU student faces battery, disorderly conduct and public intoxication charges.

A 24-year-old male was stabbed during the fight and sustained a small laceration to the right side of his chest, Kellams said. He tried to leave the scene of the fight but was stopped by responding officers.

The man was taken to IU Health Bloomington Hospital and was treated for injuries. He was not arrested, Kellams said.

All of the witnesses and people involved refused to provide authorities with any information about the stabbing, making it impossible for BPD to proceed with an investigation.

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