Riot Gear

UCLA officials said Friday that they are investigating allegations that campus police used unnecessary force, including tasers and pepper spray, in dealing with large protests by students and union activists last month outside a campus building where the UC regents voted to raise student fees. About a dozen students and police suffered minor injuries during the Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 demonstrations, which attracted more than 2,000 people and a large police contingent in riot gear. In a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, more than 100 UCLA faculty members expressed grave concern over police tactics and contended that protesters' freedom of expression was violated.

Police arrested dozens of students during an alcohol-fueled riot in the streets of Mankato, Minn., early Sunday after Mankato State lost its homecoming game to North Dakota State, 20-9. As many as 3,000 people were in a crowd that gathered in a student residential area, some setting fire to trash bins, tearing down fences, smashing car windows and throwing rocks and bricks at officers, police said. Police in riot gear used eye and skin irritants to disperse the crowd and arrested 45 people.

Police arrested dozens of students during an alcohol-fueled riot in the streets after Minnesota State University, Mankato lost its homecoming football game to North Dakota State University. As many as 3,000 people were in a crowd that gathered Saturday night in a largely student residential area, some setting fire to trash bins, tearing down fences, smashing car windows and throwing rocks and bricks at officers, police said. Two officers retreated after reaching the scene and waited for backup.

Thousands of young people here for a Labor Day weekend fraternity gathering went on a rampage down the main thoroughfare of this resort city early Sunday, firing shots and looting more than 100 stores. Police said 160 people were arrested between Friday evening and early Sunday evening, and 395 others had been issued citations for various offenses.

Long before the Democrats settled on the site of next week's national convention, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks had decided whom he wanted to oversee security, if Los Angeles won the right to host the event. The chief's man had spent seven years running the Police Department's Special Weapons and Tactics unit, an elite group known more for confronting--and sometimes shooting--armed suspects than for community relations. This is a man who has coordinated about 500 local crises.

A riot that engulfed a rural Riverside County jail in flames and left 20 people injured was sparked by a handful of Latino inmates who taunted and hurled rocks at a group of black prisoners assembled outside a dormitory, a sheriff's spokesman said Monday.

Not a single arrest occurred in New York as fans celebrated the Rangers' victory over the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals. It was a different story in Vancouver, where rioting and looting left an estimated 200 people injured and more than 50 under arrest. Police said at least 21 face criminal charges. The most seriously injured was a 19-year-old who police earmarked as a ringleader of a group that started the trouble. Police fired a plastic bullet at the man, aiming for his chest.

Several hundred police officers took to the streets to ensure another night of peace after Gov. Jennifer Granholm called for reconciliation and healing in this city plagued by unemployment and racial tension. Granholm surveyed the damage earlier Thursday from two nights of rioting and met with city leaders. "The state must wrap its arms around this community," she said.

Knife-wielding inmates rioted at the West Virginia Penitentiary on Wednesday, seizing half of the maximum-security prison, holding 13 hostages and demanding to meet with the governor, authorities said. State troopers in riot gear encircled the overcrowded, 120-year-old prison, and officials made plans to "take back the institution," said Marshall County Sheriff Donald Bordenkircher, a former warden of the penitentiary.

If there was a genesis to the brutal aftermath of the Rodney G. King verdicts, a place where it all began, it was at Florence and Normandie avenues--a thoroughfare that lies gutted and leveled now. What happened there? Sides of the story abound: The side of gang-bangers who ignored the suggestion of one of their own to demonstrate peacefully in a white neighborhood. The side of the police, who, outnumbered, seemingly succumbed to bureaucratic paralysis.