Party Animals

No one would ever compare what happened at a USC party two weekends ago to the MacArthur Park melee last May 1. On the outrage meter, nine measly arrests by riot cops don’t even measure up to the Election Day worries that thousands of ballots might go uncounted because voters forgot to mark a special bubble at the top of their ballot. Disenfranchisement trumps debauchery any day.

But a couple things are troubling. You’ve never heard of Joel Avery. And you never saw one word printed about what went down at his party in the L.A. Times. Hundreds of students converged at the end of a long week on January 25 for what Avery called an “epic” event. More than 1,000 RSVP’ed on Facebook. “If I had any idea what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have even thrown the party,” said Avery, who helped organize the seven-house party on 30th Street, a two-block stretch of student housing.

Partygoers describe the evening as unfolding in stages, moving from one act to the next with a Shakespearean sense of impending doom. Paul Prado, a USC student who watched from his porch on 30th Street, said in the first act of this drama, two officers from USC’s Department of Public Security showed up asking questions around 7 p.m. “It seemed ominous to me already,” Prado explained. “They knew early on.”

With a crowd this large, the booze dried up fast, long before midnight, when the DJs shut off the music and everyone began pouring into the streets. Campus police blocked off the area and called LAPD for back-up. Arriving officers couldn’t break things up either, so they called for more. The next wave of at least 80 LAPD cops came prepared for a riot, with shields over their faces, batons in hand, pellet guns at their sides, and the whirr of a helicopter overhead.

“That helicopter – that was the dumbest thing LAPD did.” Avery said. “It was like a second party. Everyone was going nuts once it arrived.” The night was still young for the drunken and now bored partygoers, who saw in the LAPD’s arrival the opportunity to play the part of the rebel. Hendrix blared from a window nearby and one student held up a picture of the Ayatollah.

Officers inched their cars through the crowd to clear the streets. Many partygoers fled but some 10 to 15 rows of students sat in the middle of the street in protest, while many more sat on the sidelines to witness the evening’s climax. Three feet away, the LAPD formed a skirmish line with batons in hand. An officer barked through a megaphone that the crowd had three minutes to leave or face “police action.” Avery, coordinating efforts to keep the crowd under control with campus police all night, volunteered to get on a megaphone, calm the crowd down and talk them into going home.

Sgt. Robert Rivers, the incident commander, said he does not recall Avery’s offer, but said that it would have been too late: “There was the potential for causing great injury. They were given plenty of opportunity to disperse.” Students began throwing cups of beer and cans at the cops and even glass bottles, and at the end of three minutes, the officers charged the crowd. Videos posted on YouTube reveal chaos and show the frontline of partygoers being trampled, shoved, and struck by batons.

It’s hard to tell whether the force used was “excessive” or “reasonable.” At least one student was arrested for three counts of assaulting a police officer. Michael Rousselet, a USC student who spent most of the night watching the drama unfold from his front yard and inside his house on 30th Street said that he heard high-pitched screaming shortly after the LAPD charged. The Daily Trojan reported that one student was tasered. “There were definitely people being beat,” said Meher Talib, a senior at USC. “I think the cops overreacted.”

During this chaotic moment, many of the nine arrests for “failure to disperse” were made, according to one of the students arrested.

Rousselet was particularly disturbed by the officers who came inside his gate and shoved students into his house, a moment caught on YouTube. He said one of his female friends standing inside his gated front yard was shaken up when she was pushed to the ground by a police officer. This outraged Rousselet, since he said most of the people, including his roommates, were only watching passively from their private property.

“Why did they have the right to come into our yard?” he asked. “If I had locked the gate as they were trying to come in, would they have had the right to hit me and stop me?”

Even witnesses critical of their peers and cynical of their rebellious posturing, believe the LAPD response was heavy-handed and counter-productive to their intended goal of keeping the peace. “I’m not pro-police and I’m not pro-students, but what happened was a lot louder and disturbing than if the party had been allowed to run its course,” said Jon Worley, another USC student, who said he stayed mostly on the sidelines watching the event unfold.

Avery agreed, and said that while it seemed fair to call in the LAPD and that most of the officers he spoke with were “pretty nice,” he thought they should have backed off. “It was kind of an ego thing,” Avery said. “Completely unnecessary.”

Aside from the students, LAPD expert and freelance writer Celeste Fremon, who blogs at Witnessla.com, and editorial writers at the Daily Trojan, this event seems to have slipped below the radar. Councilmember Jan Perry, who represents the area, had nothing to say. Even Najee Ali, a community leader who rarely ducks a fight, held his fire. “As I get older, I get more careful picking my battles with the LAPD.” Maybe we’ll have to wait for the official report from the LAPD. This isn’t a black-and-white case of cops acting excessively or students behaving badly, but there are issues that should be examined in public. The No. 1 question: Did it have to go down this way?

Maybe USC’s $35,000 tuition should be increased to hire more professional lobbyists who can make sure questions like this get answers, just in case more than a handful of people remain in Los Angeles who care whether the rights of students are trampled.

“S” is for subway, Antonio

Last week Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Los Angeles faced such bad money problems that he wanted to crack down on city-issued cellphones and remove 500 of the 10,000 city-owned cars off the road. It all sounded like a bit of fear-mongering to try to drum up support for Proposition S, the $237-million communications tax that voters overwhelmingly approved Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the mayor held a victory news conference and said the budget challenges remain. We’re still waiting for the first employee to volunteer to take five days off without pay to help balance the books at City Hall. We also would like to print the name of every city employee who loses their taxpayer-paid car or cellphone.

Sixty-five percent of voters agreed to impose the tax. Now, if only the mayor could get behind a funding measure for public transportation projects in time for the Nov. 4 general election.

Fabian needs a job

Now that voters have rejected the Fabian Nunez Job Preservation Act, otherwise known as Proposition 93, the decent thing would be to send any feelers about potential jobs to the Assembly Speaker. Here are a few positions that might fit his resume:

* Vice President in charge of governmental affairs for the Agua Caliente Indians. Wear a large overcoat with extra big pockets to the job interview so you can show them where you’ll stash all the lobbying cash and gifts. Not that you’ll need much now that voters fell for Propositions 94-97 that pretty much give away the store to the California’s four largest tribes, including the AC in Palm Springs. But continuing the tradition of big-fat contributions to key Democrats should help ward off the auditors when the grumbling begins that the Massive Casino Expansion Act of 2008 hasn’t produced promised money for the state.

* Assistant Professor of legal ethics, UCLA School of Law. Convicted lawyer Stephen Yagman tried to beat his prison rap by offering to teach at UCLA. The judge wouldn’t go for it. But Fabian’s better-suited to hanging out with the young crowd. With his baby face and small build, he even could pass for a student with a few more growth years left. All that he lacks is remorse for the deals he cut for industry-puppet Bill Burke, whose term Fabian got extended as the chairman of Southern California’s low-performing smog-fighting agency in exchange, by appearances at least, for a job for his wife. And he’s not about to say sorry for living beyond his means on extravagant globe-trotting, so-called trade missions. If King Fabian names his course, “Confessions of a Corrupt Legislator,” he’ll fill Royce Hall every week. Try double-sessions and he’ll pick up some extra shopping money.

* Head butler for the Getty House. Given his already close relationship with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the lone tenant of this sprawling mansion, Fabian would be the perfect help, anticipating the mayor’s desires and whims before he could even verbalize them – or read them from his index cards.

Emma Gallegos contributed to this column. Send insults and ammo to BigAl@lasniper.com.