Police Investigating Postgame Brawl

The ramifications of Saturday night’s melee after the Rancho Alamitos-Covina Northview Division VIII quarterfinal football game were still being felt Monday. The Covina Police Department announced the possibility of more arrests once more videotapes of the incident are reviewed by detectives.

Two people were arrested Saturday night after the postgame brawl, which started while the teams were shaking hands following Northview’s 14-7 victory over visiting Rancho Alamitos.

A Rancho Alamitos junior who plays on special teams was arrested on felony assault charges for swinging and hitting at least one person with his helmet. James Neal Webb, 20, who played for the Vaqueros in 1995, was charged with interfering with a police officers’ duties.

Sgt. Pat Buchanan said he expects to make more arrests on “both sides” in the next week or two.

“If the videos don’t show reasons for the actions we’re seeing on the video we already have, we will be making more arrests,” Buchanan said.

Rancho Alamitos and Northview administrators were still trying to determine how the fight started. Rancho Alamitos Athletic Director Dan Rankin interviewed players Monday who were “close to where everything broke out.” Rankin said the player who was arrested was suspended from school for a minimum of three days.

The school is conducting its investigation so it can file an incident report to the Southern Section office. Rankin said the fight caught him by surprise.

“From being an athletic director for a long time, you can sense when there’s going to be trouble,” Rankin said. “I was so confident there was nothing going on that I went to the bathroom.”

Rankin said no disciplinary action will be taken against Doug Case, the Vaqueros’ head coach.

“Doug feels extremely disappointed in the kids,” Rankin said. “We’ve kind of had the reputation as the Oakland Raiders of high school football and Doug has worked hard to change that over the last four years. Unfortunately, in some people’s eyes, this kind of incident puts us back to Square 1.”

Bill Clark, Southern Section assistant commissioner, said his office will wait for incident reports from both schools.

“If this office is confident with actions taken by both schools, we will not act further,” Clark said.

Case, who has led Rancho Alamitos to three Garden Grove League titles and five playoff berths in his five years, said he will not resign over the incident.

“I’m frustrated,” he said. “I’ve put my family on hold while I’ve tried to build this program up. I can handle a loss, but I can’t handle something like this that will tarnish the program’s image. . . . Nobody’s going to remember we went 11-0; they’ll remember the brawl.”

Buchanan said considering there were more than 200 people on the field, his department will have a difficult task deciphering who was guilty of assault and who was simply trying to defend himself.

He said it would help if his detectives had more videos to analyze. He has reviewed videos taken by Northview’s athletic department and he will soon view a video taken by Time Warner Cable of Garden Grove, which has been shown on local television stations.

“We think there may be as many as six tapes out there,” said Buchanan, who instructed all parties with tapes of the game and postgame to contact his office at (626) 858-4461.