"Riot" in Wash. St. college town brings out SWAT team
(CBS/AP) SEATTLE - Hundreds of college-age revelers in Washington state whose party had been shut down threw projectiles at police who responded with pepper spray to disperse them, authorities said.
Three people were arrested during the melee late Saturday and early Sunday in the college town of Bellingham, home to Western Washington State University, about 75 miles north of Seattle.
"There was drinking, it became disorderly and pretty much an out and out riot," Bellingham police Sgt. Mike Scanlon told The Associated Press.
Several police officers suffered minor injuries from broken glass, and police cars and a public bus were damaged, police said in a news release Sunday.
Scanlon said the unrest began as police dispersed a noisy party that had drawn a few hundred people.
According to CBS Seattle, videos shot by eyewitnesses showed street signs ripped out of the ground and police cars smashed.
"Everyone's swarming the cars, started dancing, and people jumped up on top of the cars," Jared Cortnik, a WWU senior, told the station.
Cortnik said after the party had been shut down it moved to another location close by. Within an hour, he said, hundreds more people had arrived. But when officers showed up, Cortnik said, they didn't move in.
"So then people started mooning people, and the cops didn't do anything," Cortnik told CBS Seattle. "They felt empowered even more so. So it got to the point where they started throwing stuff; to the point where it was just beer bottles and chairs."
He estimated it took another hour for SWAT officers to arrive, who used tear gas and flash grenades to disperse the crowd.
Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard and Western Associated Student Body President Carly Roberts released a statement Sunday afternoon on the incident, saying, "the extent to which university students may have been involved has yet to be determined. Of the three arrests made, none were Western students. Nevertheless, this "riot" in the community we are proud to call home has stunned us all, for it is so out of character."
The statement went on to say that "...while no Western students were among those arrested...public safety officers will be reviewing surveillance videos and criminal charges may then follow....should any of our students be found to have engaged in lawless and destructive behavior, they have no place at Western." Bellingham police tweeted early Sunday morning that they are continuing their investigation; continuing, too, to look at all those videos.