Second Night of Violence Erupts at Chico Festival; 41 Are Arrested

Baton-wielding police officers battled 1,000 revelers on the streets of Chico into Sunday’s predawn hours during a second night of rioting triggered by the city’s annual celebration of its pioneer heritage, officials said.

About 200 officers, some from cities as far south as Modesto, tried to quell the violence that erupted late Saturday and continued until about 5 a.m. Sunday, said Sheri Nelson of the Chico Police Department.

Officials said the violence raised doubts that the springtime festival, commemorating the frontier heritage of this college town 90 miles north of Sacramento, would continue.

Sunday was relatively peaceful, according to law enforcement officials, bringing a quiet end to what Chico Mayor Shelton Enochs said will probably be the city’s last “Rancho Chico Days” festival.

“Everyone officially associated with the event made the best effort to keep it peaceful, (but) we cannot expose the community to this anymore,” he said. “I think the festival’s had it. It’s history.”

Several officers, including 10 from the Chico Police Department, were injured by revelers who pelted them with bottles, rocks and beer cans during the Saturday night-Sunday morning melee. Four officers were treated for cuts, bruises and a twisted knee at Chico Community Hospital, officials said. All were released.

Police had been dispatched about 9 p.m. Saturday to a street near Cal State Chico, where they helped firefighters put out a bonfire revelers had fueled with wooden fence pickets and an old couch, Nelson said. It was one of several small fires in the area, including about half a dozen set in garbage dumpsters, authorities said.

The arrival of police sparked the rock throwing and other violence by the mob, authorities said.

By dawn, 41 people had been arrested on charges ranging from failure to disperse to battery and obstruction of a police officer, vandalism and arson, officials said. A motorcycle and two vehicles, including a van from a local television station, were overturned and burned during the fracas, and windows of local businesses and cars in the area were smashed.

Nelson said damage estimates will probably not be available for at least another week, as merchants and others assess the vandalism that occurred.

On Friday, 52 people were arrested after a party at a student apartment complex escalated into a confrontation between police and more than 1,000 people.

The violence came on the heels of similar problems that marred a festival at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo the previous weekend. Two nights of disturbances in an area near Cal Poly resulted in the arrests of about 110 people and injuries to more than 100. The melees spurred civic leaders and campus officials to indefinitely cancel the college festival that had been held annually since 1933.

Enochs said the riots in Chico reflected an apparent attitude among college students that street violence and drunken revelry are rites of spring.

“These people involved in this seem to be having a good time,” he said. “It’s not dissimilar from what happens in Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Springs. It seems the spring bash isn’t a success unless they excite the police (and) cross the line, drink too much, throw rocks.”