ST. GEORGE — Cedar City Police said Tuesday there was no crime involved and no further action will be taken stemming from a Halloween incident where three people were seen in blackface inside the local Walmart.
The incident drew national and international attention when it was seen in a viral social media video.
“We have concluded our investigation,” Cedar City Police Chief Darin Adams told St. George News / Cedar City News by text.
Adams said the city attorney and the Iron County Attorney concurred with that conclusion. County officials had previously said without evidence of a crime, there could not be any prosecution for a hate crime.
“Both offices agreed with the investigative team that there is no evidence of any crime, and therefore, nothing to prosecute,” Cedar City Police said in a statement.
However, while it had previously concluded that the three people in blackface were not students from Iron County, the Iron County School District said it has disciplined other teens in the video who were determined to be students in the district.
The district said it will not reveal the extent of that discipline or which schools those students attended, citing privacy laws.
School district spokesperson Shauna Lund said disciplinary action will be part of those students’ records but is protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Similar to federal health privacy laws, the federal law passed in 1974 protects the confidentiality of student educational records and limits their disclosure.
But Lund said it was ultimately still a learning experience not only for youth in the area but for the entire community.
“We can hope it is a learning experience and we can work together as a community,” Lund said. “This is not a public education problem but a community issue.”
Cedar City Mayor Garth Green did not respond to a request for comment.
In the Oct. 31 incident, a person confronted and recorded a group of eight people appearing to be minors with three wearing “jailbird” costumes and wearing black minstrel makeup considered to be bigoted.
The video, which initially went out on TikTok and has since spread on other social media platforms, sparked wide media coverage worldwide and also provoked the harassment of people identified as being in the video but later proving not to be. That included calls to schools and online messages to people from far outside Iron County. St. George / Cedar City News has chosen not to publish the video or images from it.
Walmart said in a corporate statement that ultimately, the people in blackface were escorted out of the store and police were not made aware of the incident until the next day.
Adams said that because no crime has been committed, the ability of police to release information about those involved is “very limited” even after the wide speculation that took place on the internet following the incident.
As far as the police, city, county and schools are concerned, those in blackface were not local students but were accompanied by some teens from the area. And the case is closed.
“The identity and personal information about those involved is irrelevant to the outcome of our investigation,” Adams said. “We won’t comment further about the individuals or where they are from.”
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