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No charges in Thanksgiving shopping scuffle at Walmart

Saying it comes with the Black Friday territory, Moline Police say no charges will be filed in an early bird shopping scuffle at the Moline Walmart Thanksgiving...

Saying it comes with the Black Friday territory, Moline Police say no charges will be filed in an early bird shopping scuffle at the Moline Walmart Thanksgiving night.

"There's a line between chaotic and criminal," said Lt. Scott Williams.

"Obviously there was pushing and shoving and elbows. It's like calling a foul in basketball, how much do you allow," he said.

Shoppers started shoving and yelling while surging to snap up discounted cell phones, and things started to escalate.

"For all that Walmart can do and the police department can do to prevent an incident from taking place, it's extremely hard to police stupid," Lt. Williams said.

The shoving and yelling match happened around 10:00 pm Thanksgiving night, and was caught on one shopper's cell phone.

Police in uniform helped to keep the peace, but are seen trying to get frenzied shoppers to "back off," after one shopper passed out. Police say he was later taken to a local hospital.

The good news is that police were already in the store.

"Walmart, anticipating Black Friday and Gray Thursday with all the shoppers, actually hired 17 off-duty Moline Police officers to work from six in the evening until 3 in the morning on Friday, so there were already 8 to 10 officers spread throughout the store."

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