I went down to City Hall and filed a complaint against the Olympia Police Department for their inciting the crowd to riot on Valentine's Day at Evergreen State College.

A new video posted by the Geoduck Student Union shows the Olympia Police ignoring both chain of command and rules of engagement policies. These policies are there to prevent riots from forming out of peaceful demonstrations. Their negligence and stupid bravado caused the event to escalate needlessly putting officers and students in danger.

I stated that the Thurston County officers at the car who never felt threatened enough to use crowd control actions were engaged in the process of a peaceful resolution. The Evergreen policewoman had announced to the crowd that she would let him go, after being advised that that would be the best solution, and was in the process of getting his name and contact information.

The police on the scene first, and therefore in command of the situation, gave no indication that they approved or condoned the other officers coming in and using force. The police on the outside of the circle did not have a strategically limited position like the cops inside the circle making their use of force seem unwarranted and dangerous to the officers surrounded.

You get what you give. What goes around comes around. As the call, so is the echo. All these sayings come from traditional wisdom. That wisdom guides us in how we treat the people in our community. If we look at our own lives history often we can see this is true. Unfortunately the police are determined to seek retribution beyond what is fair. Unless we stop them, rationality and wisdom will be defeated by vengeance and abuse of power.

The Olympian states, “Physically damaging or disabling an emergency vehicle constitutes first-degree malicious mischief, a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.”

Historically, challenges to power have been met with fury and retribution in orders of magnitude larger than what could be considered fair and just. One destroyed cop car is not equal to ten years in jail served by people used as scapegoats. The police officers will receive no punishment for beating and dousing the public, yet again, with pepper spray, sending one student to the hospital with bruised ribs. Instead they will receive over time pay, which will continue to increase the costs of the incident. 

A police car remains flipped over and destroyed behind the Evergreen State College gym this morning. It is a silent reminder of an infamous Valentine's night. It is important that we try and make some sense of what happened and why. What made hundreds of students surrounding a cop car start chanting for the release of a black man in the back of the vehicle? What made the chanting and blockading become pepper-spray and broken bottles?

The majority won’t look very far for the answers to these questions. Most administrators, faculty, staff, students, media and police will take certain stances that are predictable and simple. Their reactions will be based in stereotypes. Unless we reject these answers as insufficient, valuable understanding will be lost.

A better understanding of why students sat covering their swollen eyes unable to breath and cops were forced into retreating away from a myriad of thrown projectiles can be discovered in a historical context. Olympia passed a law that effectively banishes the homeless from downtown. Police downtown increase their arrests and harassment for frivolous crimes like jay walking. Evergreeners were maliciously brutalized at the Port of Olympia protests by cops earlier this winter. All these are local issues that make this campus upset.

On a larger level students are fed up with a war in Iraq led by a president they hate. This causes a legitimate sense of powerlessness over their government. Issues like global warming and a rapidly recessing economy portend towards hopelessness about their future. These, along with mounting school loans, are common worries of college students everywhere in America. Here at Evergreen these troubles have started to lead towards action.