This Year, Let's Skip the Violence

The UMASS Dartmouth police have released their 'official plan' to combat fun after any playoff victories under the guise of, I don't know, rowdy behavior. Of course, they say that the World Series year resulted in $100,000 extra dollars in damages and police costs. Yet, $30,000 of that was sent to the town of Dartmouth to reimburse their coffers for police overtime costs. How much more of that 100k was spent to bring on a gazillion State Cops? Probably at least another 50-60k, because there were upwards of a hundred of them - each night. My guess is that all that "rowdy behavior" last time around resulted in less than 20k in actual damages, which may or may not have occurred if the police weren't acting like such tight-fisted ass... never mind.

Meanwhile, the cops were employing the same 'less lethal' tactics that resulted in an innocent girl being killed in Boston, rubber bullets galore. I personally know of at least one person that ended up going to the hospital because of the actions of those cops that night. That night they literally shot the messenger - the college newspaper's reporter, who was covering the story, was the one who ended up with huge welts at the hospital.

Why is it that large crowds of police officers tend to end in needless police brutality more often than not? Do we need to send our troops to Europe to learn how to handle masses of gathering people? Considering our First Amendment gives people the right to peaceably assemble, it sounds like an important priority. And if there just so happens to be a few arses on any given night, it doesn't give cops the right to swarm in and harm everyone.

To make sure a Red Sox victory celebration doesn't get out of hand, UMASS (and Boston) just needs a few patient officers patrolling the crowd and handling individual circumstances as they come up. Just because a few jerks start tipping a van doesn't mean you spray rubbers into the crowd - that will only serve to really make things dangerous. Just ask Victoria Snelgrove.