Coveted Swatch timepiece brought throngs, and police, to Roosevelt Field mall Saturday

The Swatch store at the Roosevelt Field mall temporarily closed on Saturday after the launch of a highly anticipated watch collaboration unraveled into disorder and multiple people were arrested, Nassau County police said.

The incident centered on Royal Pop, a colorful new line of pocket watches born of a partnership between Swatch and Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet. By early morning, hundreds of shoppers had converged on Roosevelt Field to be the first in the store to buy them, according to multiple Instagram posts.

A Nassau County police spokesman told Newsday officers responded to the mall in Uniondale around 1:40 a.m. for disturbances and a large crowd gathering for the Swatch release.

"Several hundred individuals gathered, and disorderly conditions developed after individuals in the crowd refused numerous lawful orders by police and attempted to push past officers," police said in a statement Saturday night.

Police arrested four people, including one on a second-degree assault charge, police said.

"The crowd was dispersed and a visible police presence was maintained," a police spokesman said. "The Nassau County Police Department will not tolerate disorderly behavior and takes the necessary steps to maintain public safety."

Representatives of the mall and Swatch store could not be reached for comment.

Multiple social media posts show more than a dozen Nassau police officers holding back and using pepper spray on a shouting crowd near a mall entrance.

Watch influencer Chris Salih said in an Instagram video that there was a "mob" of 500 people there for the event.

"A lot of people were pushing each other, there were fights, there were people arrested and there was pepper spray used by the police," Salih said in the post.

In an interview Sunday, Salih, who has 200,000 followers on his YouTube channel and is the founder of the Gotham Watch Club in New York, said the experience at Roosevelt Field was avoidable.

"The way they rolled it out caused a lot of problems," Salih said. "They released them in such limited numbers and there are many other ways of releasing them."

Some of the people on the line were selling their spots to others who felt the pressure not to miss out on the limited release, he said.

"They knew thousands would line up for this," Salih said. 

Swatch said in Facebook posts Saturday morning that multiple U.S. locations, including the store in Roosevelt Field, were closed "in view of public safety considerations."

Similar scenes played out across the country, including in New York City, according to multiple media reports.