Police officers stood guard saturday at the Howard vs. Tyner basketball game held in Henry W. Bowles Gymansium. While security at the game was not heightened, it was rescheduled to saturday afternoon following recent post game shootings at area high schools.Competing against the shrieks of mothers, the hoots of teenage boys, the rhythmic claps of cheerleaders and the squeaks of basketball shoes, Harrison Morgan’s voice barely traveled from his seat in the bleachers to the man behind him.
“There’s no defense!” Morgan said early in the third quarter Saturday, as Tyner poured in consecutive buckets to cut into Howard’s lead inside Henry W. Bowles Gymnasium — “Home of the Hustlin’ Tigers.”
Posted up near the court, at least one at each corner, stood six police officers. And out in the gym’s lobby, a couple more officers waited. In the parking lot, a line of nine patrol cars sat, several of them meeting hood to bumper like a law-enforcing snake, just waiting.
In all, 10 officers guarded the Howard campus Saturday afternoon. That level of protection is typical for a high school basketball game — at least a rivalry game, police said. The time of the Howard-Tyner meeting, however, was unusual.
The schools were supposed to play Friday night, but after last week’s game between Howard and Brainerd, police say a teenage boy fired from a car in the parking lot. The gunfire didn’t hit anybody, just a couple of cars. And police arrested the alleged shooter.