Stephen Lippenholz was the face of Saturday’s Route 1 postgame celebration. Bloodied and screaming at officers outside Ratsie’s at the corner of Knox Road and Route 1, Lippenholz left the scene — to a hospital — with perhaps the most serious, but not the only, injury of the evening. Lippenholz said police shot him in the face with a pepper pellet. As a Diamondback reporter and columnist and a throng of concerned students watched the sophomore letters and sciences major double over, it was perfectly clear that crowd control had deteriorated into police-induced chaos.
From the reaction of police, it would seem that the thousands of students who flooded Route 1 after the Terrapin men’s basketball victory over Duke University were looting area businesses or attacking innocent bystanders. But that’s not at all what happened. Students were not devoid of all culpability. A few road signs were knocked over and several small fires were lit. A major roadway was blocked for several hours. But that’s no justification for the spray of pepper pellets and punches that police threw in students’ direction — usually just to get them to disperse, not to settle them down.
Lippenholz had surgery yesterday to fix his broken nose and remove plastic from his face. Some of his fellow students received less serious, but nonetheless disturbing, injuries. Young women snapping photos of the melee were hit by police nightsticks and pushed to the ground with shields. Officers rode horses into peaceful crowds. Some students said police aimed pellet guns at students like hunters aiming at prey. Students who tore down road signs and lit fires may have made the celebration uncomfortable; the police response made it downright violent.
The force out Saturday night was a combination of University, Prince George’s County and National Park police departments. They were trained to work together. Whether one department was responsible for the excessive force is not yet clear, but the motivation for all police in a situation like Saturday’s should be the protection of students, residents and property. Police responded aggressively when there was no serious threat to any of the three.
All three police departments should voluntarily launch reviews of their actions Saturday night. Their unbelievably rapid and assertive response made students into the enemy, almost invited them to behave violently and sent several to area hospitals. Students were out on Route 1 to celebrate. Police turned the celebration into a riot.
