Simpson's Daughter Charged With Fighting

[movieguy]

Simpson's Daughter Charged With Fighting

By Associated Press

January 19, 2005, 1:10 PM EST

MIAMI -- O.J. Simpson's 19-year-old daughter was arrested after she refused to stop yelling at officers who had been summoned because of a fight outside a basketball game involving her old prep school, police said.

Sydney Simpson was charged Saturday with resisting arrest without violence, punishable by up to a year in jail, and disorderly conduct, which carries a possible 60-day jail sentence.

Simpson yelled profanities at the officers called to Ransom Everglades School after a boys' varsity basketball game against Gulliver Prep, according to a Miami police report. Sydney Simpson graduated from Gulliver last June, and her brother, Justin, 16, attends the school.

Officers asked Simpson to quiet down three times as a crowd of more than 15 people gathered, police said.

"Because of the defendant's disorderly conduct, it prevented this officer from conducting an investigation," according to the report by Officer Francisco Villarreal.

While she was being taken into custody, she slapped another officer's hand, leading to the resisting arrest charge, the report said.

Two teenage girls told police that Simpson hit them in the face, but they declined to press charges, authorities said.

Yale Galanter, a Simpson family attorney, said the dispute outside the game was a "cat fight" that Sydney Simpson had resolved by the time police arrived, but officers escalated the situation. He did not say what instigated the conflict, but said he believed Simpson acted appropriately.

"After the police were told that nobody wants to press charges ... Sydney is arrested for disorderly conduct?" Galanter said. "It doesn't take a legal genius or a great legal mind to figure out that the event was over and that it was the police who caused the charge to be had."

Asked to respond to Galanter's comment, police Lt. Bill Schwartz said: "For her safety and the safety of all concerned, the officers decided to remove her from the situation. Clearly this upset her even more, and she slapped one of the cops in the hand. Not a good idea."

Simpson is attending college in Boston. She signed a notice to appear at a date to be set later by court, Schwartz said.

O.J. Simpson, the former football star, broadcaster and actor, moved to Florida after he was acquitted of murder in the slayings of the children's mother, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a companion, Ron Goldman, in California in 1994.

Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press

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