While Badger fans celebrated the men’s basketball NCAA overtime win Saturday across Madison, fans of the University of Arizona took to the streets for a different reason.
The Daily Cardinal spoke to Arizona sophomore Ethan McSweeney and freshman Jazmine Foster-Hall, the news editor and assistant news editor of The Daily Wildcat Sunday, to gain insight on the Tucson riots.
The Daily Cardinal: Can you describe the overall scene after the game? We have seen a lot of videos, but what was it like actually being there?
Ethan McSweeney: It was pretty crazy. I guess things started after the game ended – it was really close, we missed that shot at the buzzer.
There are all of these bars on University Boulevard, and so people were watching the game there and toward the end of the game people were overflowing out of the bars onto the sidewalks trying to watch the end of the game. When we lost, fans started leaving but because everyone was leaving at the same time, people were walking in the streets, police were trying to herd people off of the streets.
Jazmine Foster-Hall: I would say approximately 20 minutes after game ended was when rioting began.
EM: There were riot police already on University Boulevard before the game even ended. They lined up across University Boulevard, and they formed a wall on the street and people just startied chanting “U of A.”
They ran on to this streetcar platform, and people just saw all the riot police lined up and they started throwing stuff at the police and they moved into the intersection in front of the police. And then the Tucson Police declared “unlawful assembly” and gave the orders in both English and Spanish.
That’s when they started firing pepper balls and throwing pepper gas canisters at fans. It was kind of a slow process of trying to move people down University Boulevard and out of the area. While they were advancing down the road they were just continually firing pepper balls and throwing pepper canisters.
DC: How do you think last night and this morning’s events will affect the relationship of students and the community with the police in the future?
EM: I don’t want to speculate, but fans and students were pretty upset with police.
JF-H: The crowd was chanting “fuck the police” at points.
EM: And they were throwing beer, they were throwing objects— firecrackers, smokebombs—at the police.
DC: How would you describe the mood on campus today? Have things died down a little bit or are they still pretty hostile?
JF-H: Students are certainly still talking about it. The majority of the students I’ve run into or that I’ve overheard speaking were definitely talking about the events from last night. The ones that I overheard were complaining about the actions of the police. I cannot say that that represents the mentality as a whole, but it does seem to be a pretty big topic of conversation on campus right now.
EM: It’s really the only thing people are talking about.
