New details emerge from Courant story
The Hartford Courant ran another story on Friday's early-morning Fountain Ave. incident. Here are some details contained in that article, that I don't think have been highlighted on Wesleying yet:
Police claim it wasn't just beer bottles that were thrown:
Police said the students threw beer bottles and a lit firecracker at officers, and ignored orders to disperse given via loudspeaker multiple times over 30 to 40 minutes. Patrick McMahon, the department's deputy chief, said officers showed "great restraint."Police claim that normal procedures were followed:
McMahon said complaints the departments received from students would be reviewed. "Right now, it seems the officers followed policies and procedures in responding to a call for assistance," he said. "Because of the size of the crowd and the aggressiveness of the crowd, we had to call for help ourselves."Police claim that this is not the first party breakup situation that they've dealt with... though students refusing to disperse is unusual:
"Every year we get called out there for large parties, but they end up dispersing themselves without any major incidents," Sgt. Scott Aresco, a department spokesman, said.It was a P-Safe shift supervisor who contacted the MPD:
Wesleyan public safety officers asked the students to disperse, but they didn't. Around 1:30 a.m., the shift supervisor contacted Middletown police for assistance, police said.Verbal abuse apparently went both ways, and MPD waited 40 minutes to call in reinforcements. MPD claims that the pepper balls were fired at the feet of students:
Nine officers eventually arrived and, using a loudspeaker, ordered students to disperse, Aresco said. Aresco also said a beer bottle was thrown at the car of the first officer to arrive, that students were verbally abusive, and that a lit firecracker went off under a parked police car.Police claim that no tear gas was used:
When the students refused to disperse and continued to throw bottles and cans after 40 minutes, the officers requested support from state police and police in Cromwell and Portland, Aresco said.
Police then moved in to disperse the students, using non-lethal force that included firing at their feet with pepper ball guns, Aresco said. Police Tasered two students and arrested five students who allegedly attacked officers or interfered, Aresco said.
... said she then had trouble breathing because of what she thought was tear gas, though Aresco said no tear gas was used.
34 comments:
ACHOO!
'Scuse me, MPD, I'm allergic to bullshit.
Yeah, wow. It's pretty ridiculous they would lie about so many things that there is photographic and video proof of!
Wow. They are really just denying any blame whatsoever. Incredible.
because people coughing up blood and needing to wash out their eyes is because of seasonal allergies.
The tear gas vs. pepper spray argument is inconsequential... if you do even minimal research into the two substances you will see that they are closely related. Furthermore I strongly doubt any student on the Wesleyan campus has the ability to tell the difference between the two. Also, the widely circulated picture of a "tear gas cloud (for you, 2:54)" was in fact a photo of the smoke from the firecracker thrown under the police car.
In this case, we need to do ourselves all a favor and believe some of what the police are saying.
3:02... I don't see us taking any blame either!
So the police account is immediately dismissed as BS simply because it's a police account? And people wonder why the public thinks we're a bunch of arrogant elitists who don't think the rules apply to them.
Reading between the lines of everything it sounds like both sides were at fault. Some of the students were assholes. Some cops were assholes, but they had pepper spray.
right, the cops had pepper spray. they used violence. they're the bad guys.
2:54, what lies? Please send the "photographic and video proof" to Wesleying so we can all see.
The part about shooting at feet is probably not accurate - weren't there some people who had scars from pellets to the chest?
Not that I'm necessarily saying MPD deliberately aimed at people, but they can't deny that some of their shots hit more than pavement.
So throwing a bottle or firecracker at someone isn't violent? Just checking.
just scroll down on the main page of wesleying, and you'll see a video of a student lifting up his shirt: videotaped evidence that they were in fact NOT shooting at students' feet, evidence of the lies which the MPD are releasing to the public
I'm just so pissed off at whatever idiots thought it was a good idea to throw beer cans/bottles at police and--excuse me?!--light a fucking firecracker under one of their cars. I don't care how drunk you are, that's just sad.
It seems clear that the police willingly inflicted trauma -- not only on those attacked, but on the collective consciousness of the community.
There was wrong on both sides -- but what the students did was, until the police arrived, largely victimless. The police themselves have injured students, created widespread apprehension, and have lowered their standing throughout this community. The only real victims in this seem to be those created by the police.
i think i remember reading that the police used rubber bullets as well as pepper balls.. maybe they shot the latter at students' feet and the former at their upper bodies.
i don't know, seasonal allergies are pretty bad. i've personally lost about a pint of blood so far. who knows? maybe i am allergic to pepper spray.
anyone who thinks that what the cops did was justified is a fucking idiot. plain and simple.
it wasnt a "firecracker," it was a smoke bomb. only smoke comes out -no sparks, no fire. thats not a danger, its just annoying. regardless, it wasnt even "lit at officers," it was put under the car. just clearing that up.
I was not even on campus, but what bothers me most about this entire event is that we [Wes Students] did not pay any attention to PSafe's initial attempt to clear up the party.
Yes classes/finals were over, yes its fun to party. But PSafe is one of the few reasons our campus is as incident free as it is. I sure as hell wouldn't want to go to Wesleyan if PSafe didn't exist.
Similarly, if the reports that students were throwing bottles/cans, verbally berating officers, and apparently throwing a smoke bomb under a police cruiser are all accurate, the Police responded as one would expect, with force.
The article doesn't mention the extent to which inappropriate force was used. Andy Price's "minor injuries" included a gash on his head that required staples from the bites of Officer Douglas Clark's attack dog. Price was lying down with his hands above his head while the dog was allowed to chew on his scalp for 30-40 seconds before Clark finally called the dog off. There are other personal student accounts that do not mesh with the "great restraint" of the officers claimed by Aresco.
that report is straight bullshit. the police had zero right to use the methods they did
The real impediment to resolving this situation will be the stubbornness of Wesleyan students to accept that there are opinions and observations, other than their own, that matter, too.
6:56, This article is full of only those "opinions and observations" from one side, that's why we're mad, not to mention that some of these "observations" are blatant attempts to cover up the truth.
they should've arrested everyone simply for being d-bags.
6:29, do you really think a college student who admitted to being drunk has a more accurate handle of what happened than several sober police officers? Neither side has probably presented gospel truth, because both side's accounts present their teller as nearly blameless.
What happened was what you get when you combine drunken fratboys, curious and activist partyers, and overzealous police officers. BOTH sides are responsible and BOTH sides give twisted views of what happened.
i was there, and i remember the smoke bomb that someone threw landing near my feet, several feet away from the closest cop car. whoever threw it is an idiot, but "a lit firecracker went off under a parked police car" isn't exactly what happened either.
It's just so fucking frustrating that there are Wesleyan students that are stupid enough to throw a beer bottle/smoke bomb. Really. If any of that had not happened, and the police still acted with that kind of force, we'd have so much more justification to be angry.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! How the fuck can it even be up for question whether the amount of force used was warranted! Obviously all the people who support the MPD on this (i.e. ignorant, bitter locals) are going to claim that both sides were at fault, but anyone with a brain can see that the MPD are considerably more to blame. They used brutal and excessively violent tactics on a peaceful student party. It is inexcusable. Bottom line.
Furthermore, why the FUCK hasn't Roth released a definitive statement?!
If you listen to some of the hundreds of pointless 911 calls the students made that night you can clearly hear one female said "the police are shooting at our feet with paintball guns". What they In fact used was pepperball guns. The pepperball rounds contain an irritant similar to pepper spray. It is a "less than lethal" weapon used to disperse large crowds.If the students didn't act like drunken fools and just left they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. The police were justified and the posted videos dont prove otherwise.
8:30:
a) I am not a bitter, ignorant local, I'm a 2010
b) your argument adds nothing to the conversation besides anger. Articulate some arguments, don't just claim people who don't see shit your way don't have a brain.
-7:27
few seem interested in the fact that the police presence made the problem they were trying to alleviate worse. blame it on the students if you want, but again, what did cops expect on the LAST NIGHT OF SCHOOL.
Does anyone have any idea on legal precedent in CT regarding the use of pepper spray in a crowd situation like this? Is it considered "proper" if bottles are hurled at cops (by presumably drunk individuals) who out number the cops 10:1? I am not taking one side or the other here. I am just saying that we assume this is an improper use of force, and from my perspective it would seem to be so. But virtually every TV news broadcast has interviews with students who freely admit that they were asked to disperse several times over 45 mins or so and didn't AND that beer bottles were thrown at the cops. So in this situation in CT, does the law say use of pepper spray on the crowd is "acceptable." Does anyone know - not guess but KNOW?
anybody who has ever been to a larger party on fountain can give some sorely lacking context, which was that p-safe is always there trying to disperse the crowd. they politely suggest we disperse, and are regularly ignored. this is the norm, so though they did try to disperse the crowd for a long time, it was not taken any more seriously than on any other night of the year. maybe if they only broke up parties when actually needed (i.e. almost never) then we wouldn't have ignored their efforts.
k, just so everyone knows, bottles were not being "hurled" at police officers. ONE time a person tossed a 1/2 empty beer onto the hood of a police vehicle. thats it. that is the truth if anyone is interested i know because i saw it with my own two eyes and i don't even drink.
that the 1/2 empty beer was tossed onto the hood of the police vehicle makes it 10% less idiotic.
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