The gathering of students en masse on State Street has long been established as a Halloween tradition in Madison, but Saturday night the revels turned unruly as rioting, destruction of public property and police intervention reached a fever pitch.

Students witnessing the night’s events described the atmosphere as “volatile” and riot participants as “out of control” as the violence escalated and a police riot squad arrived.

University of Wisconsin sophomore Andy Rusterholz said his first inkling of the crowd’s destructive capacity came when students began throwing bottles, tree limbs and other debris at the windows of the apartment above Sugar Shack Records to aggravate the partygoers in the apartment who had shut the drapes in windows looking out to the street.

Soon the crowd’s mentality shifted toward violence, said Rusterholz.

“It escalated into a ‘Let’s see if we can break the windows’ kind of thing,” he said. “The crowd started cheering every time something hit the window, and when it finally broke you could hear the cheering all the way down the street.”

The police arrived shortly to curb the destruction of windows of several businesses.

Rioters also set fires in the street from cardboard boxes and pieces of costumes and attempted to push down street signs, reported UW sophomore Evan Craig.

According to Craig, as the police forced their way into the crowd, students began chanting.

“You could hear students yelling ‘Whose street? Our street!'” Craig said.

Azeem Bakhtiar, a UW sophomore who witnessed the riot squad’s arrival, said the police did not use tear gas until student rioters became uncontrollable.

“They launched tear gas canisters after much, much provocation,” Bakhtiar said.

The provocation included rioters throwing glass bottles and flaming objects from the fires at the officers, according to Bakhtiar.

Even after much of the crowd had dispersed, police officers kept a tight reign on the area where the majority of the destruction occurred.

UW senior Jason Diener, whose apartment is located on State Street, reported that police blocked people from walking on or crossing the street.

“I was just trying to get home and they wouldn’t even let me cross the street,” Diener said. “Finally this one cop escorted me.”

Students expressed varied reactions to the actions of the police force in responding to the situation.

UW senior Gary Glushon claimed the police used unwarranted force against people attempting to return to their homes and needing to cross State Street to do so.

As a line of cops in full body gear prevented students from entering the State Street area, he explained, many students began to question how they would get home.

According to Glushon, when he asked the police how he could get through the blockade, an officer sprayed tear gas in his face.

“After the rioting, all these cops were pretty trigger-happy, but that was ridiculous,” Glushon said. “It was totally unnecessary.”

Glushon also stated that he felt the actions of the police further aggravated the crowd.

“If anything, the cops provoked more rioting because when I hit the ground, the rest of the crowd went crazy,” Glushon said.

Other students said they felt the police were not exerting enough restraint over the crowd early in the night to prevent the later destruction.

“There were five officers standing behind me doing nothing, just chatting, while the crowd was breaking windows,” Rusterholz said.

Craig, in comparing State Street’s Halloween experience last year to that on Saturday night, said he saw a smaller police presence among this year’s revelers.

Bakhtiar agreed, saying that some of the destruction may have been avoided if the police had been present in greater numbers.

‘Pack mentality’ at play

Students identified several factors they felt contributed to the destructive activities of the State Street crowd and the increased violence of this year’s celebration.

Rusterholz cited the timing of the festivities, which began Thursday night and continued to Saturday, as one reason for the increased agitation of the crowd.

“It really seemed like a longer celebration this year, stretched out over a longer period of time, so people got more riled up,” he said.

Several students said a large group of people consuming more alcohol than usual guaranteed trouble.

Jeffrey Anders, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at University Health Services, agreed that the “disinhibiting effects of alcohol” added to the violent potential of the rioters.

Anders also suggested “the anonymity of the crowd” as a factor.

“People think they’re not doing something alone and not sticking out as an individual doing violence,” Anders said.

Craig agreed, saying that police intervention in the window breaking created a “focus of attention for all the drunken crazies” and served to solidify the rioters into a single entity acting uniformly.

Pack mentality, a basic group psychology phenomenon, was also at play in the actions of Halloween celebrators, Anders indicated.

“The idea that ‘everyone else is doing it’ spurs people to do things they wouldn’t do as an individual, like vandalizing public property by breaking windows or throwing things at police officers,” Anders said.

“There’s a different morality that develops for a short time.”

Supporting the pack-mentality theory, Bakhtiar said of the rioters’ actions, “All it took was a few people to do something that everyone else thought was a good idea.”

Rusterholz said he observed only one particular group making trouble and felt the rioting resulted from the actions of that small number of people, while most other crowd members acted primarily as spectators in the initial stages of the riot.

“There was a whole attitude among people, like ‘I’m not going to do this because I know it’s wrong, but since it’s happening I’ll stay and watch,'” Rusterholz said.

“At first, I think a lot of people didn’t want to be actively involved — they were just seeking entertainment.”