Tales of an Aspergian Bus Driver

Riot experiences

I understand people want to hear about this, or something.

So, here goes: My "Riot Night", from midnight or so on.

Around midnight I was driving Moonlight Express, doing my normal Red shuttle. My first clue that something was different was the call on the radio "All busses need to detour around campustown, there's a riot in progress on Welch." My passengers cheered at this point, though it involved them not getting close to where they were going.

For the rest of the night, the busses did goofy detour things, depending on where the riots were reported to be. The final detour involved going through campus. Busses did not go in the area bordered by Lincoln Way, Hyland, Beech, and storm.

At one point, I was detouring through the lower Friley intersection (the T-intersection by Music Hall). There was smoke outside (or so I thought), and I was curious as to what was burning. So, like any curious bus driver, I opened my window. It smelled like gunpowder - which was confusing, since the haze would require an ammo depot blowing up to create, and I wasn't aware of any ammo depots in Ames. After a few seconds, I realized this was not smoke, but was tear gas - and I was poking my head up to the window inhaling it. Not good. I didn't get enough to do much harm, but my eyes were feeling it, as was my nose.

After getting back to CyRide, I parked my bus and jetted back home. I put on a nice tye die shirt, dug up my gas mask, and grabbed my camera. I rocketed out on bike towards the chaos.

Cruising down past lower Friley on bike, I got a good number of cheers from people who saw a guy with a gas mask headed towards the riots.

Unfortunately, the police weren't about to let me into the Welch area to take pictures, and suggested very strongly that I go elsewhere. So, I wandered over to Stanton & Chamberlain. Police were blocking off Chamberlain around the corner of Welch, and again didn't want anyone near them. My flash wasn't powerful enough to take any decent pictures at a distance, though I probably have some black blobs appropriately captioned.

I took Knapp across, avoiding police, and ended up seeing a nice bonfire through the trees. Taking the "lawn" approach, I showed up, took a few pictures, and observed someone light a cigarette on the couch. Turns out it's someone I know, though I didn't realize it at the time.

I took a decent photo of the riot police at the corner of Knapp & Welch, and proceeded to vacate the area as one of them made a beeline towards me.

Somewhere around this point my bike tire started leaking badly, likely as a result of all the broken glass. I parked my bike and continued.

At the corner of Welch & Lincoln Way, people decided the riot had been fireless for too long. So, a small fire was started on the corner. Dumpsters were also brought out, lit on fire, and sent down the road. People made sure to kick the dumpsters away from the cars parked along the side of the road. Several dumpsters were lit, and scattered around. Somewhere in here, the fire department came roaring in, got a brick or full can thrown against the door of their truck, and tried to put out the fires. They more or less failed, because the dumpsters reignited soon after.

Soon after I finished taking photos of this, the police came running down Lincoln Way, threw a tear gas grenade in front of Arches, and watched people clear. I tried to avoid the gas cloud, failed, got hit by the edge of it, and was fairly effectively disabled for a short period. I was able to get inside Friley, and took the time to go to my room, repair my gas mask, and change the batteries in my camera (they were getting low). After about 10 minutes, I headed back out.

The gas had cleared, and I went back out. Lamp poles were downed, and laying across Lincoln Way. Cars still tried to get through, fairly successfully.

A dumpster that had been put out was burning again, and quite fiercely. I took several photos of it in front of Mayham. BLT was also around taking some photos and generally trying to avoid getting gassed.

Some people were taking out some aggression on parking meters with a large rock. I took photos, got my ankle hit with a glancing blow by the rock as I turned away (it bounced off the parking meter and clipped me), and found some other people with gas masks (apparently inspired by mine). There are a few photos of the gas mask people.

At this point it's worth mentioning that I apparently was looking very much like a stoner. A LOT of people kept asking me if they could buy weed off me - and then not listening when I told them I didn't have any. "No, man, I just want to buy a little! Hook me up!"

I decided things were dying down, so I talked with people outside Big Shots for a while, and then headed back to Welch to take pictures. Tipped port-a-potties, broken windows, a general mess. I hung around for a while, then headed back in, uploaded photos, and went to bed.

Was it smart being out and about in a riot? Nope. Am I glad I was out there taking pictures? Yup.

As for police actions, I didn't actively observe much going on, but from what I've seen posted elsewhere and from what people on the bus have talked to me about, the police were looking for a riot and their actions helped escalate it into the violence that happened.

-=Russ=-

Posted by rgraves at April 27, 2004 07:20 PM