UC Students, Police Wage Pitched Battle; 8 Hurt, 17 Arrested

A violent melee between 50 police and more than 400 youths outside a controversial UC Berkeley housing facility early Saturday led to 17 arrests and left at least eight people hospitalized, authorities said.

The demonstrators sealed off a major street for three hours, lighting bonfires and throwing bricks and bottles at firefighters trying to put out the blazes.

The five-hour confrontation began late Friday night when club-wielding police tried to break up a party at Barrington Hall, a student-operated residence hall just south of the campus.

The police action occurred after the building’s owner, the student-run University Students Cooperative Assn., received an injunction Friday to bar any public gatherings in the building. The association’s membership voted last fall to close Barrington Hall, which has a history of illegal drug use and neighbor complaints.

George Proper, general manager of the association, feared that the party would lead to vandalism. Friday’s injunction prohibits the Barrington residents from having any guests.

Residents of the 180-room building said they were having a private party and were not disturbing anyone.

“We were just reading poetry and enjoying some quiet music. We weren’t causing any trouble,” said junior Kibi Schultz.

But when police arrived with Proper and asked the group to disperse, the mood quickly grew belligerent as students began banging pots and pans, and shouting obscenities at police.

The 75 students who were driven out of the building gathered on Haste Street, about two blocks west of Telegraph Avenue. As they built barricades, lit fires and taunted police, the students were joined by many other young people from the largely student neighborhood four blocks south of the campus.

The crowd swelled to about 350, and several demonstrators broke the windows out of a police car and attempted to set it on fire.

Other students in the three-story building’s upper floors threw desks, drawers and furniture out of their windows to help stoke the fires.

Police formed lines on each end of the block and another in a parking lot across the street from Barrington. They held their ground for more than an hour and let the fires burn as high as 20 feet in the air. The students turned the event into a street party and danced around the barricades yelling obscenities and making obscene gestures at police.

After the crowd thinned, police gradually moved forward and firefighters began hosing the flames, but they quickly retreated when they were met with volleys of rocks and bottles. Firefighters then sprayed demonstrators and the building. The confrontation remained in a stalemate for about an hour as police advanced, then retreated.

After one firefighter was hit by a rock and fell off a firetruck, students surged forward. The police charged to meet them, chasing students into the building and hitting many of them with clubs.

After getting reinforcements, the police combed the dormitory room by room, knocking down some doors with fire axes and driving students out of the building. More than a dozen students said afterward that they were forced to “run the gantlet” through club-wielding police.

The police stood guard and would not let any of the students return to the building, although some students stood in the street outside Barrington taunting them until about 4 a.m.

Six students, one firefighter and one police officer were hospitalized and later released. Ten police and several firefighters were treated for minor injuries. Dozens of students also sustained minor injuries.

“This didn’t need to happen; they (police) were incredibly violent,” said junior Eugene Perez as he held a cloth to a bloody gash on the back of his head. “I’m beaten up and homeless--and they accomplished nothing.”

Lt. William Pittman, who commanded the police, defended their action in the incident--the fourth violent protest in Berkeley in the last year.

“We were met with a great deal of violence and I feel we acted with restraint under these circumstances,” he said.