Tearing up
Police are calling Cedar Fest a riot.
The event, which gathered a vociferous bunch of 3,000 to 4,000 people at an off-campus apartment complex in East Lansing, at the very least qualifies as 'out of hand.'
The crowds swelled peaceably enough. As they began to fill roadways, one attendee worried that a particularly obnoxious batch of violent participants would ruin the event, according to the Lansing State Journal.
That was around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Unfortunately, his concerns came true - the gathering did, in a frenzy of yelling and bottle-throwing, become sufficiently out of hand to warrant the title of 'riot.'
Reports of party-goers shouting to be tear gassed, of assaulting officers with bottles, of lighting dumpsters on fire - these all suggest some attendees were intoxicated not only on alcohol but on being a part of what they considered a historic event.
Some will contest that the officers themselves exacerbated the situation, and that party-goers would have continued peaceably had police not arrived.
However, it's challenging to request police simply overlook a several thousand-person gathering. Mobs of drunken people have some unfavorable tendencies, and looking the other way would be negligent.
Of course, party-goers did not take kindly to police presence.
Officers likely were more forceful than some attendees would have liked. Then it became a matter of defiance.
Did police respond too harshly? At 10:44 p.m. Saturday, they donned helmets to block the bottles. Not until 2:16 a.m. Sunday was tear gas deployed - that's three and a half hours of attempts at less severe forms of crowd control, according to the LSJ.
Facing an increasingly violent crowd, East Lansing Police Chief Tom Wibert said, police were forced to use tear gas to end the gathering.
Yes, some innocent people were gassed. But given the increasingly violent state of affairs, something had to be done before it spiraled more out of control.
Wibert allowed an acceptable duration to determine whether tear gas was necessary - it was a last resort.
