Posted on 05/09/2011 11:57:38 PM PDT by Cardhu
It was meant to be a party to celebrate the upcoming end of the school year at Western Illinois University. Instead, the Wheeler Street block party in the rural Midwestern town of Macomb got out of hand resulting in hundreds of partygoers red-eyed from pepper spray, injured police officers, dozens of arrests and lots of confusion over who was to blame.
Amateur video of the swat team arrival to Wheeler Street. Video posted on YouTube.
Amateur videos circulating on YouTube capture the madness at the college party attended by an estimated 3,000 students. One video in particular shows students tearing down and burning a stop sign. According to Macomb Police Chief, Curt Barker, it was the fire that prompted police officers to call riot police for backup. Not wanting to end the party, several intoxicated students threw beer bottles at the police. Law enforcement officers responded by dousing students with mace.
However, the videos also show police pepper-spraying what appear to be innocent students, clearly several metres from the raucous partygoers.
Parents of many of these students have pressed both the University and the local police for answers and in some cases are seeking legal counsel. The Macomb newspaper, The McDonough Voice reported that at least one student hired an attorney following the incident.
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Can anyone sue these parents for raising kids who are too stupid to leave a party when it turns into a riot?
When in doubt, Mace the lout!
These parents have no legal standing, their kids are adults and responsible for their own lives.
Sounds like the usual hopped up, semi-polluted, dope smoking liberal arts majors. It’s Spring so lets heave beer bottles at the police
They can still hire lawyers for their kids and pay their fees and continue to encourage them blame others for their own actions.
Same thing happened at Ohio University in Athens. 170 arrests.
“Can anyone sue these parents for raising kids who are too stupid to leave a party when it turns into a riot?”
Ya ever been walking home with no idea something like that is going on, turned a corner, and been overrun by a swarming mob of idiots — and cops chasing them?
I have.
Yes, I was young, dumb, and not situationally aware at the time. Still glad all I got was some tear gas from a cannister fired off by the pursuing police.
PS It was a Fourth of July celebration in a major city, and that answers the whole “how didn’t you hear it coming” thing.
What really gets to me is that if I went back to work now,at age 60,an ignoramous similar to one of these would be my boss,tell me what to do,decide whether or not to keep me employed and make lots more money than me.
The fate of many of us who don’t have degrees.
Yes,I have had the experience in the past,so I know what it’s like to be a mature,middle aged person working under a young college grad.
But if one doesn’t have a degree,one is intellectually deficient and possibly of defective character,so it’s only right that these young people who will get degrees will be over those of us who don’t have them. Right?
May I interrupt?
Same here. I was at Northeastern University in Boston during the 1970 Cambodia rioting. One night I was waiting out in front of the school at the trolley stop on Huntington Avenue after a few hours at the library when a small crowd of SDS provocateurs and their supporters fled by my toward their Hemenway Street refuge. Close behind was a pursuing crowd of Tactical Police Force cops in hot pursuit. My long hair, pea coat and camouflage pants apparently qualified me as a legitimate law enforcement target, despite my armful of books. I was clubbed to the ground by a passing cop.
It happens.
Three friends and I almost walked into a post Rodney King riot in Atlanta, unknowingly. One man was killed, and others injured.
Had, we stuck together and fought the mobsters, we would have been fine, though. Mob dynamics are such that weaker individuals are mainly attacked. A group that would stand and fight are not a tempting target.
We had some of our college slum parties at Youngstown State (GO PENGUINS!) raided by police. A little tear gas shut things down without much incident. You know you had a good party when you can still smell the tear gas in the morning. (that was a long time ago soon after the invention of colleges)
Over reaction on the LEO part. Anytime the University of NC wins a tournament the cops shut off the main intersection in Chapel Hill and let 20,000 kids celebrate. They clear the area of debris that can be burned and hose down the street beforehand. The kids burn what they can, have hangovers in the morning and life gets back to normal the next day.
This was justification for a SWAT training exercise.
Who do you suppose pays for the arrests and cleanup? Yep, have a celebration. Then idiots get drunk, start rioting and causing problems. Maybe someone dies and then the serious crack-down is implemented.
Good-bye party because of drunken fools.
The kids were not rioting until the LEO showed up en-mass.
A firetruck with a watertank could have dosed the small fire and everyone would have remained peaceably drunk.
A simple solution but that wouldn’t have allowed for the local SWAT to use their toys and marching orders.
Not so proud graduate of WIU. Though better than it used to be, it’s still a party school.
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