Police Brutality at RIT

Last saturday night, May 8th, here at the Rochester Institute of Technology, a large student party was held around the colony manor apartments. The administration wanted it broken up because it has been their policy to prevent students from asserting their first amendment right to assemble without involving the administration. A campus safety officer claims to have been struck with a beer bottle, after which the Monroe County Sherrifs department was called. They responded by sending approximately 30 officers with riot gear to the scene.

Although the police claim that students were throwing rocks, sticks, and beer cans at them, and that they ordered the crowd to disperse several times, video taken at the scene shows that not only was nothing thrown at the police, but the police never ordered the crowd to disperse. They claim that they fired pepper balls, paintballs filled with pepper spray, first at the trees and into the air, but eyewitness accounts and videos show that the police immediately began firing into the crowd. When students fled into the parking lot, they were chased by police, and many were shot in the back several times.

Seems a little excessive just to charge 9 people with misdemeanors.