Madison police declared a gathering on State Street an unlawful assembly early Sunday morning and cleared the crowd with officers in riot gear and pepper spray for the fourth consecutive year.
The crowd dispersed without many serious injuries or property damage reported but the escalation of enforcement tactics represented a failure of several city and police goals. 'It's a mixed bag,' Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's spokesperson George Twigg said.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4'who reported experiencing pepper spray himself'praised the police response and identified a minority of participants as the source of the recurring problem.
'The fact of the matter remains that, for the fourth year in a row, the party attracts a very small group of idiots who seem hell-bent on picking a fight with the cops,' he said. 'And for the fourth year in a row, they got what they asked for.'
Twigg also said some participants wanted to see a riot.
'Those are the people that are hard to do anything about, unless there is some type of radical change,' he said.
Cieslewicz said his personal belief is that the city would be better off if the event simply did not happen. Making that an official city policy is a separate issue, Twigg said.
Multiple police departments worked in tandem to disrupt disorderly behavior on State Street, sweeping on horseback and in groups through the 500 block as crowds became aggressive at approximately 1:30 a.m. In their wake, young men shouted taunts and started football-style chants.
The disorderly conduct of the event has allowed Cieslewicz to continue his denunciations of the Halloween party a burden to taxpayers. Madison spent $350,000 in addition to the $150,000 spent on county and other expenses according to Twigg.
'This is a huge cost, and is money that could be going to help people with low-income housing or a lot of other things,' Twigg said. 'The mayor's not really convinced this is the best way to be using those resources.'
This year's State Street celebration saw new police techniques attsempt to prevent the violence that plagued past Halloween celebrations.
Orange snow fencing was deployed at three locations to control the flow of people onto State Street. Beginning at 8 p.m., police prevented revelers from entering State Street via Frances Street. Later in the night, police set up a barricade at the intersection of Lake and State streets and only allowed people exiting State Street to pass through.
The barricades allowed police some control over who entered onto State Street but it is too early to tell how effective they were in preventing congestion. Late in the night, shoulder-to-shoulder crowds filled the 500 block of State Street.
Verveer said that with an estimated 100,000 on State Street at peak times, the event was the largest in its 30-year history. UW-Madison officials engaged in a concerted effort to discourage students from schools in the region from attending Halloween festivities.
The addition of stadium lights for the duration of the festivities were brought in to reduce anonymity and to work as a safety feature for police and revelers. It is unclear, however, what role they played in shaping the behavior of partiers.
The police unveiled a new sound system over the weekend to announce to revelers that the event was over. A second announcement was used Saturday night to declare the gathering of an 'illegal assembly' and warn remaining people they were subject to arrest. The speakers also played soothing music between announcements.
Twigg called the new audio system 'quite a bit improved from past years.' Despite the improvement, some reported it was difficult to hear the announcements over the crowd noise.
