Massive College Rager Attended By 15,000 Ends In Chaos, Violence, And Arrest
Six police officers were injured, more than 100 people were arrested and dozens were hospitalized, reports USA Today, when the University of California Santa Barbara's annual "Deltopia" spring break party turned violent on Saturday.
Over 15,000 students attended the party held at the beach community of Isla Vista near the UCSB campus. The college itself is not affiliated with the event.
Around 9:30pm, police showed up in response to reports that two people had been stabbed. In an attempt to refute authorities trying to take control of the party, one officer was hit in the face with a backpack containing bottles of alcohol.
Soon after, chaos broke out through the crowd, forcing police to use tear gas and "foam projectiles'' in an attempt to control the party-goers.
Instagram user @EddyRayy took this video of swat teams trying to take control:
Here's a scene from the party, taken by KCOY12. You can see the tear gas, but it doesn't seem to do anything to help disperse the crowd:
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Partiers taunted officers:
Students pulled stop signs out of the ground and were waving them around in protest:
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One officer was hit in the face with a brick, and partiers continued to light fires, smash bottles, and vandalize cars well into the night.
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Police say they will be using surveillance cameras to determine how to carry out charges from the weekend's events, though, social media may give them all of the information they need.
Search #Deltopia on Twitter and Instagram and you'll see that many partiers documented the entire ordeal via social media.
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Lots of photos, unsurprisingly, were tagged with "#riotselfie."
Others took photos and videos of the destruction.
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This shot is especially chilling:
And this video, showing how the party escalated to chaos, gives you a pretty good idea of what officers were dealing with that night:
It took until 1am on Sunday to break up the crowd.
"Our community is in shock today over what happened last night,'' Kelly Hoover, spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, said on Sunday morning. "It's unbelievable to see people throwing rocks, bricks and bottles and beer cans at law enforcement officers.''