On a party that was broken up, Sunday morning at Michigan State University, police used tear gas to break up a fight. Police officers claimed that over 3,000 people attended the party Cedar Fest. This was an annual party, at the university, that people were trying to revive. It was a tradition for East Lansing. Friday night before the party, students were warned not to go to the party because of past events of the party getting out of control. With the crowd control at the party besides tear-gassing the attendees, they also arrested 52 people and 48 people were ticketed. At 1 am, the crowd at the party became rowdy and officers warned people to leave the party. At 2 am, this is when tear gas was dispensed into the crowd. There were no reported injuries during this event. I feel these days; police officers are using their weapons to an extreme. I know that crowd control is an issue and we don't want any injuries to happen, but don't use tear gas. This gas could be harmful to some people and legal actions could be placed onto the officers. Last year, an officer tazered a college student at a seminar held on his campus and it caused uproar of anger. There need to be other alternatives officers can use to stop a crazy person. This issue needs to be address in same way so instances like this won't happen again. Here is the website to the article: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/police-tear-gas-crowd-at-college-party/20080406124209990001
Tear gas, as I understand it, is a harmless way to disperse crowds (in this case a crowd that was throwing beer bottles at police officers). I'm pretty sure that the effects of tear gas are very temporary, lasting around ten or twenty minutes. Also, that article said that the police first used loud smoke grenades, but after the crowd didn't completely disperse they had to use tear gas. As far as legal repercussions for the officers, there is a law allowing police officers to use tear gas in these situations. It did say in the article that every officer on the scene reported being hit by some flying object. If these people were throwing beer bottles at the officers, I think they deserved all the tear gas they got.