Michael Atherton wrote: >Which precipitated the violence: the student celebration or the police >response to it?
Walt Cygan responded: >But some students quoted in the Strib, PiPress and Daily clearly thought >the crowd was out of hand. After talking to a number of people who were there, both celebrating (without violence) and not, about the best story I've been able to piece together is the following. It consists of some amount of guesswork on my part, since I've heard contradictory stories, but some things have been consistent, and that's what I'm stressing. When the Gophers won, a friend who works in Dinkytown's first reaction was to find someone to cover for him, and drive his car out of the area and get back to work ASAP. This was before any violence, but there were some in the crowd who were already saying "let's start a riot". When things first got going, MPD initially sent very few officers to deal with the people who were blocking traffic. It sounds like there were too few officers to control or defuse the situation immediately. These officers (and the next ones to respond) blocked 4th St SE with their patrol vehicles. The crowd was growing, but things were not violent yet. Traffic had been blocked by the crowd before the MPD, but the crowd were far less efficient at shutting down traffic. Also remember that Dinkytown is a choke-point for traffic. University Ave and 4th St SE are main throughfares, and there aren't a lot of ways go around Dinkytown, especially if the intersection at 15th and 4th is closed. A bit later, someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle either at an officer or at a squad car. This began the pepper-spray and baton wielding as the MPD attempted to disperse the crowd. At some point (before about 11pm), the crowd heard that some of the hockey players were coming to the Library Bar & Grill, and the place filled up rapidly. As the MPD tried to clear the intersection at 13th Ave & 4th St. SE, many in the crowd took refuge within the Library, including some who'd been hit with pepper spray (or possibly tear gas). There was also some gas coming in through the patio doors on the 4th St side of the bar, and very soon it became bad enough in the bar that people wanted to get back outside, but both the MPD and the crowd were still there. At various points in the evening, the crowd would disperse from Dinkytown into the neighborhood. Trash cans were being overturned and a couple windows were broken (Magus Books, EastBank and the Gopher Motel are the three businesses that I've heard had windows broken). After a while the crowd would reform in Dinkytown, confronting the cops again. Bar closing (1am) produced a bigger crowd, as everyone who was in the bars got added to the mix. Some were trying to cross 4th St & University to get to campus, and were prevented from doing so by the MPD. So they milled about. Others wanted to see what was happening. A few wanted to stir things up. Basically this back and forth between the crowd and police kept going until between 3 and 5AM, depending on the location. Each time the crowd would reform, someone would get sprayed, thumped, arrested, or all three. So what went wrong? I think the MPD had too few officers ready to deal with the situation initially. For whatever reason, they were caught unprepared. There were elements in the crowd who wanted to turn things into a riot, but they were a minority. When folks were "trapped" in Dinkytown, things got worse. When the crowd would be dispersed, it would re-form. There's a pretty clear anti-MPD feeling present. It was also a relatively nice night and there were the normal groups of people drinking in Dinkytown. Many were curious and it created a gawker-slowdown of sorts. When the bars let out, that's more people dumped out into the situation, many of whom were not using their best judgement at that point. The short summary that most people seem to agree with is "The crowd started it, and the police made it worse." The only disagreement I've gotten is a few who aren't sure who started the violence, and one who's not sure what else the police could have done, given the desire for violence on the part of some of the crowd. Dave Polaschek Marcy-Holmes _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
