The Trail

Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: Opinion

Any attempt to reduce the vents of Feb. 14 on the Evergreen campus to some central cause or "bottom line" would be at best na've, and easily deceptive. This is evident in the wide range of reporting that has circulated throughout the Puget Sound region in the aftermath of what is now referred to as the "Evergreen Riot." [You will find in this issue of the Trail a thoughtful critique of the journalism surrounding this event by Joe La Sac that should give us all reason to pause.] Most discourse centers around where the blame ought to be allocated for what has widely been labeled a "breakdown of order" resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damage to Thurston County property and a dark cloud over the Evergreen campus community. These casual analyses are diverse: false accusations were made; the performers incited violence; the hype of the music robbed concertgoers of their reason; the arrest was racist; anarchists monopolized on a ripe situation; the police escalated the incident unnecessarily using violence; the rioters were out of control. What occurred that night is not reducible to single cause, but is the product of an emotional and irrational interaction between two equally fallible groups of humans.

On one hand, a default reaction to an event such as the Evergreen Riot might be to characterize the rioters as delinquents, crazed by extreme music, striking out in naiveté and requiring the reluctant but firm hand of the police to restore order and serve justice. This position seems to be based on a premise that is deeply ingrained in American culture: the notion of the "to serve and protect" police officer; the noble knight of "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted." If something goes down and the police step in, we are conditioned to automatically presume the moral infallibility of the law. This is the assumption I grew up with. As a child I interacted with Sheriff's deputies and city police officers regularly, and was on a first name basis with more than one. These were the people that attended my family's church, that lived in my neighborhood, that I trusted. What a wonderful sense of security this paradigm affords us! To their credit, I still believe that the majority of police women and men do approximate to a high degree the noble stereotype that American culture has apportioned them. But the people that comprise the law enforcement community are just that: people. What reason do we have, therefore, to believe that the institutions of law enforcement in our community are insusceptible to the same breakdowns and dysfunctions as we readily acknowledge in every other agency or organization we have ever constructed?

Continued...

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