‘It scared a lot of people’: Witness describes racist harassment against Utah basketball team in body camera footage
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, have released body camera footage in connection to the reported racist harassment the Utah Women’s Basketball Team experienced while in northern Idaho last month.
In the footage, an officer speaks with a witness on the night of March 21, when the team suffered what Utah head coach Lynne Roberts described as “racial hate crimes.” The witness told police he wanted to file a report so that “people know what’s going on in this city.”
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“They’re scared,” the witness said, describing the state of the team that night. “I mean, I’m not being dramatic … get us out of here.”
Last month, the team was staying at a hotel in Coeur d’Alene for NCAA tournament games hosted in Spokane, Washington, which is roughly 30 minutes away.
The version of events described by the witness aligned with the narrative released by the team and Coeur d’Alene officials last week.
It started as the Utah team was walking to a restaurant near their hotel. That’s when a group of vehicles rolled by, and the drivers began shouting racial slurs at the group of roughly 100 people, including the n-word.
“It was aggressive,” the witness said. “It wasn’t passive. It was like they were having fun [messing] with us.”
When the team left the restaurant roughly two hours later, they walked outside to again find trucks revving their engines and the drivers shouting racial slurs.
“They had to have been waiting,” the witness said, adding: “It scared a lot of people.”
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The team left Coeur d’Alene the next day for lodgings elsewhere, and Roberts, the Utah coach, told the media that what should have been a joyous time for the players was marred by the upsetting episode.
The incident made national headlines and served as a reminder that northern Idaho has long been a hub for extremist groups, including the neo-Nazis. This picture was reinforced when the press conference where city officials apologized to the team was interrupted by what local media described as a “far-right agitator.”
Coeur d’Alene police and the FBI are investigating what happened to the Utah Women’s Basketball Team. While investigators have obtained some surveillance footage, they’ve asked the public to come forward if they have any video of what happened that night.
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