A throng of 400 teens threw bottles at Philadelphia police officers as they tried to break up an unauthorized summer cookout Sunday night, police said.
Philadelphia police say the teens lobbed the glassware at officers and jumped on cars outside the Lonnie Young Recreation Center along Chelten Avenue in the city's Germantown section.
"Mayhem," that's how a neighbor who identified herself as Chyna described the scene.
Police wound up asking some area businesses to close early, too, after some of the youths ran into the businesses. Police say most of those in the crowd appeared to be 12 to 17 years old.
The group grew rowdy after police forced the disc jockey to shut off his music around 7:40 p.m. Police responded to the party after a resident reported a noise disturbance.
Social media posts called for the "Lonnie Young Cookout" to last from "6 p.m. until whenever."
Police say no officers or youths were hurt and police opted not to make arrests to not escalate the situation.
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Neighbors claimed that no one authorized the party and that the event wasn't supervised.
"They didn't respect themselves, they didn't respect the police," Chyna said.
NBC10 also spoke with some of the teens who attended the event. They claimed everything was blown out of proportion.
"The cookout, we were doing good until the cops came and shut it down early," Kyle Kelly said.
"We was chilling until the cops came and tried to make us leave and the kids didn't have anywhere to go so they were all around here and they were causing trouble. But we were really trying to have a good time though but the cops were making it bad for us because they weren't letting us have our cookout."
