ShareThisTUCSON, Ariz. - Gone are the days when news of an after-school fight spread solely through word of mouth.
Today, text messages help draw crowds to the scuffle, and inevitably someone will post highlights on YouTube, giving the winner more than just bragging rights.
Tucson police may come across the action-packed video and see a reason to make an arrest.
And just because those watching the brawl don't throw a punch, they're not necessarily in the clear.
"One thing that we want to get across is that if you are involved in a fight or you are making the decision to go and be a witness, you can get in trouble if you do nothing to remove yourself and call authorities," said Officer Matt Faulk of the Tucson Police Department.
Videos of school yard brawls in other cities can be found on the Internet.
"Nationally, this is a very common thing; you get on YouTube and put in 'fight' and the results are amazing," said Todd Jaeger, a spokesman for the Amphitheater Public Schools district in Tucson.
A video posted on YouTube last month of a fight downtown involving Tucson Unified School District students resulted in a dozen arrests.
All of the young people face disorderly-conduct charges -- including the person who recorded the incident and posted it online.
Faulk works a walking beat and was about a block away when he heard the Aug. 27 brawl. He found 35 to 45 young people gathered in a dirt lot.
The crowd scattered, but officers were able to arrest five youths.
Then, the video landed on YouTube two days later.
Tucson police were contacted by officials from the Tucson Unified School District, after learning about the online video.
It shows a smaller crowd mulling around when two boys begin to fight.
A girl recording the fight can be heard telling others: "Hey. Don't get in front of me. Don't get in front of me."
She continues recording the fistfight, which triggered three other altercations, including one where another girl was punched in the face by a boy.
Police worked with school officials to identify seven people from the video, and they were arrested.
School district staffers use YouTube as an investigative tool, said Jay Johnston, who oversees the schools' safety and security team.
"It's not something we do any formal monitoring of, but we do check when we have situations that lend themselves to a video being posted, like a fight," Johnston said.
When a video is discovered, the school district notifies the appropriate agencies, Johnston said. He said he could not estimate how often school personnel come across videos involving its students.
Jaeger says the popularity of fight videos is troubling.
"It's alarming to me the interest and fascination kids have in this," he said. "First, they're willing to engage in violent behavior that includes self-risk, and then they ... put themselves at legal risk by posting video or photos online. It's essentially evidence."
The Amphitheater district has had only a handful of situations like this over the last few years, Jaeger said.
Tucson police say arrests stemming from illegal activity posted online are rare.
"We don't have someone searching the Internet for that type of activity," said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a Tucson Police Department spokesman. "But when it is brought to our attention, we begin looking into it."
School officials also wait for students, teachers or others in the community to come forward if they see or hear of such activity.
With the advances in technology and an increasing number of social networking sites, area school officials have started educating children on the long-term consequences of posting inappropriate material online.
Students are told that the way they conduct themselves online should be the same as in person, Jaeger said.
"We remind them that their behavior online can last forever and is just a Google search away," he said. "In the real world, it can be as fleeting as someone having the ability to observe it and remember it."
Contact reporter Alexis Huicochea at ahuicochea(at)azstarnet.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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