Police disrupt block party near campus

By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald

Police broke up a large St. Patrick’s Day block party Saturday, causing parts of KL Avenue to be blocked off by squad cars.

Photo courtesy of Amanda Sanborn | A crowd gathered at the West Campus Village apartment complex in Kalamazoo on Saturday.

The party, which started around noon at a parking lot in the West Campus Village apartment complex, resulted in attempts to disperse the crowd by the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety using mace, bystanders said.

No one with authority to comment on the situation at KDPS was available as of late Sunday.

Graduate student Amanda Sanborn said police arrived suddenly.

“It was really cool for about two hours, then the cops showed up,” Sanborn said. “I was in the middle of one of the crowds and people started yelling the cops were here.”

There were at least 10 officers on foot, with enough police cars on KL Avenue to block the street, Sanborn said.

Sanborn saw a full beer can thrown at a female police officer, which resulted in the police macing students.

After many of the students had dispersed, Sanborn and her friends were told to go inside while police gassed the area.

Sanborn said she still doesn’t understand why the police arrived.

“I don’t understand why the cops were called,” Sanborn said. “We were just drinking and chilling. We weren’t going anywhere else except the parking lot. We weren’t fighting each other.”

Sophomore Nick Ruggles said the commotion started with the stealing of a cherry picker from the Arboretum.

“[Someone] drove it down Emajean and we were chanting around it,” Ruggles said. “That’s what got the cops’ attention.”

The cherry picker was parked in a back corner of the lot with the police arriving around 25 minutes later, Ruggles said.

Ruggles also said the situation flared when beer cans were thrown at police.

As Ruggles and a group walked back along Emajean Street, police drove by for what he called a drive-by macing.

“I was near the road, so I got some in my face, but the guy in front of me really got trashed,” Ruggles said. “He said it didn’t feel so bad then grabbed his eyes and nearly hit the deck. My eyes burnt but it wasn’t real bad.”

Ruggles said the damp weather made the mace bearable until he got inside, into a dryer environment, where his eyes started to burn.

Sanborn counted about 10 police officers on foot and Ruggles saw 15 police cars from a second-floor window.

Sanborn estimated there were about 300 students there, while Ruggles said that number could have been around 1,000.

“It was definitely an interesting day,” Ruggles said.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Mar 14 2010. Filed under Breaking, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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