Rioting at BSU

By Cameron Pierson, Staff Writer
6/26/2006

A riot at BSU broke out toady because of protesters at a renaming ceremony of a field to a fallen alumnus, Kevin Roberts who was killed in the War in Iraq. Over 25,000 students from the University’s Freedom Society and the ACLU showed up in opposition of this and circled around within 300 ft. of the field ceremony. The people attending the ceremony, which were over 4,000 began to verbally voice their opposition about their presence. With the throwing of a bottle, the riot broke out. The riot then spread to encompass two city blocks. Setting up a perimeter, the police tried to quell the situation by bringing in:

40 State Police

1 state tactical police helicopter

300 National Guard troops

30 sheriff patrol officers

160 police from Taylor city

20 S.W.A.T. team members from Taylor

10 S.R.T. from Fillmore

State Troopers arrived within ten minutes and about 40 Taylor police were already assigned to the scene beforehand. Police started to make their arrests around 1:30 P.M. when the scene was taken under control. The Boys’ State University Board of Trustees commented that they were working with the Governor; however, they had to wait for ten minutes outside of his office because his office was busy watching a soccer game.

One eyewitness of the entire incident, Tom Gless, said, “The police were being attacked with sticks and bottles. I saw one officer on the ground just being beaten. One of the other officers pulled out his gun and shot one of the men beating the officer.” One of the Taylor City Police officers was quoted saying, “ I can not begin to describe what it was like inside that crowd. Why?” He said this while sitting on the ground holding gauze on his head to stop the bleeding.

A student of Boys’ State University, Sarah Blindes, said, “When the two sides started fighting, the police just started swinging and fighting the people. Then everyone was fighting.”