(U-WIRE) COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The streets of College Park were cleaned of debris by yesterday afternoon, but for some, the repercussions of Monday night’s post-game celebrations still linger.
Eighteen people, only three of whom are students, are facing criminal charges after being arrested during the celebrations. Others are still recovering from injuries and property damage.
Prince George’s County Police made nine arrests; University Police, eight arrests; and Maryland State Police, one arrest.
University of Maryland Police made the arrests in connection with a variety of assaults, disorderly conduct and damage of property, said spokesman Capt. Paul Dillon. At least one person was arrested after throwing glass bottles at police and another when officers saw him damaging a police cruiser.
Two of the arrests county police made were in connection with the looting of College Park Bicycles. Of the others, six were for disorderly conduct and one was for disorderly conduct and assaulting an officer by hitting him in the jaw with a bottle, County Police Chief Gerald Wilson said.
The person state police arrested was charged with second degree assault, said spokesman Sgt. David Blake.
Medics were as busy as police, as the two groups moved together throughout the night to respond to injuries and fires.
“For every one of those calls, there was at least five Maryland State Police officers accompanying us,” for safety and easy access to the victims, said Ronald Blackwell, chief of the Prince George’s County Fire and Rescue Department.
The department responded to 40 calls in a four-hour period, 24 of which were for medical attention and 16 involving fires on campus and in the College Park area, Blackwell said.
Of the 24 medical calls, eight individuals were sent to hospitals for burns, cuts, bruises, seizures and alcohol-related problems, Brown said. One student was treated for deep cuts on his head, another person was transported with second degree burns on his hands.
A county officer was transported to the hospital after being hit in the back with a brick.
University police officers only suffered minor injuries.
“I had some officers with bruises and so forth from bottles and rocks, but no one was treated,” Dillon said.
Physical property on the campus and in the city fared worse.
Three University Police cruisers were damaged. One cruiser had the front windshield smashed and a second vehicle lost the rear window. Two officers were in each cruiser when fans destroyed the windows. The third cruiser’s hood was damaged, Dillon said.
University Police are still determining how much damage occurred last night. Some damages that occurred on campus included rocks thrown through the windows of the southern part of the Administration building and a car in front of 14 Fraternity Drive, and property stolen from a car through a smashed window in front of 4 Fraternity Drive.
Officials said about $5,000 worth of damage was done Saturday night after the Kansas game and less was done Monday night.
Dillon said one of the reasons the injuries to students and police may have been minimized was the delay in clearing the crowd from Fraternity Row.
“As soon as we have had fires in the past, we’ve put them out, but last night moving on the crowd would have exacerbated problems,” Dillon said.
One reason police didn’t immediately interfere with revelers on Fraternity Row was because police were worried that moving the Fraternity Row crowd onto Route 1 – already congested with fans – would cause even more chaos.
“Where would the fans go? We made the decision not to disperse the crowd until Route 1 was secured,” Dillon said.
On Route 1, county police defended their decision to deploy pepper balls from “modified paint guns” when the crowd of 10,000 to 15,000 fans broke down the bicycle barriers police had set up before the game.
“I would rather stand here and tell you this is why we did what we did than stand here and hang my head,” Wilson said. We used our level of force judiciously.”
Police weren’t just reactionary in dealing with the celebration.
Police and the city of College Park worked together to prepare the city for the celebrations by removing all street furniture, signs, trash receptacles and trash from the streets and hosing down dumpsters to prevent fires, City Manager of College Park Dick Conti said.
“I think it was a good example of a well-planned security operation,” Conti said.
Police officials said they were pleased with the manner in which their personnel handled the situation.
“I’m just here to say how extremely pleased and proud we were at the performance of our men and women,” said Larry Brown, chief of the Maryland National Capital Park Police, the agency which provided the mounted officers.
Wilson congratulated the Park Police and said, “they were our MVPs of the night.”