Boston Police arrested nine people and issued summons to four more at the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday.
Of the 13 people set to face charges, 12 are adults while one is a person under 18. Police did not name them, but said the charges range from minor in possession of alcohol to assault and battery, affray, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery on a police officer, and destruction of property.
The arrests came as officials in South Boston attempted to crack down on the “anything goes” attitude of previous parades. At the 2024 parade, a person was assaulted not far from the route.
A video of the altercation went viral on social media and showed at least four suspects kicking and punching a person down a slope leading to a baseball field.
MBTA Transit Police arrested a 26-year-old “highly intoxicated” man carrying a gun at the 2024 celebration.
Throngs of green-clad, shamrock-festooned revelers took to the streets in the neighborhood Sunday.
Green, white and orange confetti — the national colors of the Emerald Isle — rained down along parts of the 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) route. Parade floats and marchers wound through the neighborhood of South Boston, a center of Irish-American heritage in a city where more than 1 in every 5 people are of Irish descent.
Spectators packed behind metal barricades playfully hissed as colonial reenactors wearing British tricorn hats and other period garb marched past on the warm but overcast day.
The parade, which dates to the turn of the 20th century, marks both St. Patrick’s Day and Evacuation Day, which commemorates the day in 1776 when British troops left Boston after a protracted siege during the Revolutionary War.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
