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By Stephanie Casanova |
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When Tim Decker heard people
cheering out on University Boulevard after the Arizona men’s baskeball team
lost on Saturday night, he left his dorm to see what was going on.
Decker, a biology freshman,
stood on the corner of University Boulevard and Tyndall Avenue, observing the
crowd chanting “U of A.” He said people began to get aggressive when the cops
showed up.
Decker said he was alone when a
cop approached him, asking him to back off the street. Decker asked, “Why?”
because he believed he wasn’t doing anything wrong and was standing on public
property by himself observing the scene.
“The next thing that I knew is
I was hit in the face with a nightstick, and then I took off my hood and I put
my hands up and I was like, ‘That’s assault — you’re not allowed to do that,’”
Decker said. “And the next thing that I knew, I was being grabbed by police
officers, and they all started hitting me and beating me and telling me I was
resisting when I was screaming, ‘I’m not resisting,’ and it was all pretty
scary. I was a little confused about why everything was happening.”
During Saturday night’s clash
between crowds and officers of the Tucson Police Department 15 people were
arrested, nine of them UA students.
Decker said about six officers
grabbed him and hit him with their fists, and he was also hit with batons a few
times, leaving a lump on his head, scrapes on his knees and marks all over his
body, including one on the back of his neck.
Decker was taken to a van,
where he stayed with about nine other students for two hours until the area was
cleared. After being charged for unlawful assembly, Decker was released.
There are videos of Decker
clashing with police on YouTube and other social media sites. One of the most
popular videos circulating of the clash shows a woman being slammed into a
bench by an TPD officer.
The woman in the video,
Christina Gardilcic, is a senior studying psychology and Latin American studies
at the UA. Gardilcic is currently in discussions with her lawyer regarding a
potential lawsuit against TPD.
Unlawful assembly is defined in
Arizona Revised Statutes as “1. Assembling with two or more other persons with
the intent to engage in conduct constituting a riot … or 2. Being present at an
assembly of two or more other persons who are engaged in or who have the
readily apparent intent to engage in conduct constituting a riot … and
knowingly remaining there and refusing to obey an official order to disperse.”
Sgt. Chris Widmer, a TPD public
information officer, said everything was going OK until smoke bombs that had
been set by a crowd member went off, causing people to take over the street.
Officers did what they were
ordered to, which was to maintain control on University Boulevard to prevent
such a gathering, he said.
Widmer said past incidents from
1997 and 2001, when riots broke out after championship games and people flipped
cars over and damaged businesses, taught the department that violence can
result from large gatherings.
“The only option they did not
have was to stay in place or to move east past the line,” Widmer said. “When we
allow crowds to mingle and we allow them to build up and to kind of feed on
each other, historically, that’s when the disorderly conduct starts.”
Decker said the crowd of people
seemed like a tailgate to him, where people were simply showing their pride for
the university’s basketball team. Decker added that he didn’t think police were
trained very well for what happened and were probably scared because they
weren’t sure what to do.
“When they were going into it,
just because of what’s happened in the past, they automatically thought
whatever was going to happen — it was going to be a riot, and that’s how they
were going to deal with it,” Decker said. “But I thought that was the wrong way
of going about it.”
Ahva Sadeghi, a philosophy,
politics, economics and law junior, said she was leaving Gentle Ben’s Brewing
Company and trying to get to her car when she was stopped by a TPD officer. The
officer told her she couldn’t go that way, so she turned around and tried
walking toward Euclid Avenue, and an officer kept her from walking that
direction as well.
An officer then dropped a
pepper canister in front of Sadeghi, releasing pepper spray in her face and
causing her to cough nonstop for about an hour and a half after the incident,
she said. Sadeghi added that her throat still hasn’t cleared since Saturday’s
incident.
She said police should have
only interfered if fights broke out or if students were being harmed, which she
didn’t see happening on Saturday after the game. Students were simply
high-fiving each other in the crowds, she added.
“Students should be able to
celebrate a win or to be sad as long as there is no one harmed,” Sadeghi said.
“Here at U of A we’re a community. … I feel like a direct win when my
basketball team wins, and I feel a direct loss even though I wasn’t at the
stadium, even though I had nothing to do with the win. That’s how united our
school is, and we’re very passionate, but passion shouldn’t be
confused with fury.”
Sadeghi said her parents were
concerned because they don’t live in Tucson, and they rely on the local police
force to protect her when she’s away for school.
“They don’t want the police to
put us in harm’s direction,” Sadeghi said. “My parents were so nervous. I
couldn’t carry a conversation with them because I couldn’t stop coughing.”
