Rochester Police and organizers of the annual Puerto Rican Festival are speaking out about incidents that happened after the festival ended Sunday night.
It is problem that has plagued organizers of the festival for a number of years now. The actual event, held at Frontier Field, goes off peacefully, with music and dance and ethnic foods. But there has been some rowdy behavior on the northeast side of the city after the festival wraps up on Sunday night. It bothers both the organizers of the event, and Police Chief Jim Sheppard.
"We have a lot of people out and about, a lot of people out in a positive way celebrating culture and everything and then we have some people being hooligans who we have to deal with and I think we dealt with those, and that's why you see the numbers as far as the number of arrests that we had," Sheppard told reporters .
Sheppard does say the trouble that happens after the festival seems to have diminished each year. This year there were 27 arrests after the festival, not at the festival site, but on various streets in the northeast part of the city, most for disorderly conduct.
The president of the festival, Orlando Ortiz, says that behavior does not reflect what organizers are trying to promote.
"Just to get a certain amount of people who decide to do these impromptu parades that don't necessarily lead to the celebration of our own culture because that's not necessarily what we're all about. It certainly is unfortunate, and something that we don't condone, " said Ortiz.
Ortiz says the festival over the three days attracted 25-thousand people at Frontier Field, for a safe, fun, family friendly event.
