East Lansing Police are assholes

I was at Michigan State University last weekend for the Final Four game between MSU and UNC. Michigan State lost 87-71 even though they were up by five at half time. Needless to say, nobody was happy and thus, the streets of East Lansing quickly filled after the game's end with students. Now East Lansing isn't exactly new to riots. They have definitely had their fill of riots in the past, namely in housing development called Cedar Village.



The catch here is that the crowd was suprisingly well behaved. The streets were filled with students screaming school chants and fight songs (ok ok, so Dan did try to start the "fuck the cops" chant... oh well) but nobody was rioting. Out of the three March Madness related riots I've attended (two others at Penn State in 2001), this was actually the most peaceful. Correction, it was peaceful until the over eager police starting tear gasing the crowd without any warning. Only twenty minutes had elapsed and nothing was going wrong but the Police decided it was time to break it up by completely pissing everyone off with tear gas. Furthermore, it wasn't just one can. It was reported that throughout the night, the Police deployed over 1,000 cans of tear gas and it wasn't even in the downtown area. It was everywhere. The police covered like two square miles with tear gas. It felt like a war zone... and this time it was the police who started it; not the students.

How sad it is when drunk students act more responsibly than the police. In any event, I have been maced (2001) and now been teargased (2005), hopefully, I can complete the mission and finally get arrested during next year's March Madness when Penn State wins the tournament in an utterly surprising upset.