RIOT OR ASSAULT?

On the basis of the evidence printed elsewhere in this paper, evidence which is supported by the unanimous opinion of students who were present at the time of the so-called riot Friday night, two points became very clear. In the first place there was no riot until wagon lands of police charged the crowd with drawn nightsticks in answer to a summons for aid, not a riot call. The police, in other words, created a riot before quelling it. In the second place, even had there been a riot the choice of methods made by the police was bad. There is a quite obvious distinction between a few hundred students and a howling mob bent on destruction. The police used methods applicable to the latter.

The evidence so far produced therefore leads to the conclusion that the action of the police Friday night was both unwarranted and unnecessarily brutal. Until the hearing on Friday, when full evidence from the police as well as the students is produced no further comment is possible.