UCSC Dance Party Assaulted

SANTA CRUZ, California – On Friday evening, a crowd of people gathered together at Porter College at UCSC for a dance party. Approximately a half hour in, dancers began moving the sound system to begin a roving dance party, with a crowd of approximately 150. As it rolled through a parking lot, a police cruiser began tightly following the dancers. Some grabbed a hold of fencing material off the side of the road, and dragged to the center of the road, (intended to be used as some sort of barricade between the cruiser and the people). The crowd moved on and walked down an open-air corridor between two rows of dormitories. The sound system settled in the center of the corridor for a several minutes as the party continued.

Without any warning, the crowd began rushing away from the sound system and the scattered array of 5 or 6 police. The police began knocking people down on the ground and grabbing any terrified person running away from them. One bystander was leaving the scene as a police officer aggressively grabbed the person. The bystander tried to escape the certain arrest, and the resulting inertia knocked the police officer on her rear-end. As of now three people have been arrested, at least one has been charged with “attempted lynching,” which means someone who tries to de-arrest someone, and assaulting an officer.