Apple iPhone 5s launch lines (fights, homeless, arrests) Sept 20, 2013
Homeless people from the Skid Row area of Los Angeles fighting and getting arrested while waiting in line for the new Apple iPhone 5s / 5c at the Pasadena, California Apple store. 100 homeless people were offered $20 to wait in line to buy the new iPhone. Violence broke out during the launch event when the homeless were denied their money.
Fights erupt at Apple iPhone launch in California
At least two arrests were made in Pasadena when a ploy to get homeless people to queue up for the new iPhones went spectacularly wrong.
An overnight campout for the new iPhone became chaotic when two men were arrested for fighting outside an Apple Store in California, and a man's plan to hire homeless people to wait in a queue for the coveted devices backfired, authorities said.
Dozens of people recruited at a downtown Los Angeles homeless shelter to buy iPhones in bulk at a Pasadena store were left unpaid, and they mobbed the man who had hired them, Pasadena police Lieutenant Jason Clawson said.
One of the homeless men was restrained for 72 hours after running into the street in an enraged state, Clawson said. Television news footage showed police breaking up several scuffles and calming down furious customers.
Moody was promised $40 (£25) but said he wasn't paid because after handing the man an iPhone, the man was escorted away by police when people became angry with him. entrepreneur,
Apple's new iPhone models, the 5S and 5C, were released worldwide on Friday. compensation.
Heather told KABC that she and roughly 80 to 100 others from Skid Row came to the Apple store. They were to wait in line all night and promised $20 in exchange for each iPhone claim ticket they gave to an anonymous businessman. Apple allowed customers to buy only two phones per person on launch day.
One homeless man interviewed by Rich DeMuro of KTLA Morning News said he was promised $20 per phone but was miffed he hadn't been paid.
"Allegedly the man did not pay some of the people he hired to stand in line," Pasadena police Lt. Jason Clawson told ABC News. "They were angry at him and surrounded him." Police on scene escorted him around the corner away from the angry crowd that was trying to claw and grab at the man.
About 200 people were waiting outside the store through the night, Clawson said, noting that officers had been dispatched to patrol the crowd. Apple also hired their own private security for their store.
Other people in line complained about the situation. Dariel Johnson, who said she had been waiting in line overnight said, "It's a lot of drama, almost fighting. So, it's an unpleasant experience."
Minor scuffles broke out at the store overnight and two men were arrested, said Pasadena police Lt. Jason Clawson. George Westbrook, 23, of Compton, and Lamar Mitchell, 43, of Pasadena, were arrested for fighting in line outside of the store, Clawson said.
Apple's iPhone 5s and 5c are now on sale at retail and online stores around much of the world, and the general impression from consumers is one of high anticipation. In North America, lines are being reported at Apple retail locations everywhere, including what analyst and Apple watcher Gene Munster (via Mashable) calls Apple's longest ever lineup for an iPhone device.
The line at Apple's 5th Avenue NYC flagship store was 1,417 people long at 8 a.m. ET, according to Munster, which is 83 percent longer than the iPhone 5 line at the same time. Munster's been keeping tallies on iPhone queue length since 2008 with the iPhone 3G, and that line was 549 people long. The next-longest after the iPhone 5s/5c was the iPhone 4, which attracted 1,300 to the flagship New York location.
Of course, Apple didn't allow pre-orders for the iPhone 4, which is bound to drive more people to retail since they weren't able to order early and just wait for the FedEx person to drop off their new devices. One good theory about why Apple didn't offer pre-orders for iPhone 5s is because of supply constraints, owing to the technical challenge of building the new A7 64-bit system-on-a-chip, and the sophisticated new fingerprint scanner built into the 5s Home button.
Images and video have been coming in on social media channels from around the world showing long lines at various Apple retail locations, including the following shot from TUAW depicting an army of Apple employees preparing for the deluge:
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