Immediately following the incident, with damages estimated at $40,000, the Greenville police and city council members, along with local apartment management and East Carolina University staff, collaborated to ensure the disturbances wouldn’t recur.
“Our police department and the landlords were involved to begin to have communication and create a culture that would provide for a safe Halloween this year,” said Greenville Mayor Pro-Tem Calvin Mercer.
Greenville city council member Marion Blackburn, said this Halloween was a major improvement, partly due to better police deployment.
“We had roughly the same amount of officers as we did last year, it’s just that we deployed them differently this year so we had more officers in the areas outside of downtown versus last year we had more downtown,” said Kristen Hunter, spokesperson for the Greenville Police Department.
She said officers were better prepared and property management companies played a key role by sending out zero tolerance messages and aiding in crowd control.
“Some of the property managers even allowed us to block the entrances to the complexes when too many were in there,” Hunter said.
ECU Student Body President Mark Matulewicz said the University also helped.
“We had articles go out through the East Carolinian...we sent out emails, and we also had a lot of sober and non-alcoholic alternatives for students this year,” he said.