Julie Conlon
Student Life Editor
What’s a Pumpkin Fest weekend without a little panic and pepper spray? Approximately 700 Keene State College students, guests and community members found out when the men in blue sprayed outdoor parties on Blake Street and Wilcox Terrace on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012.
While Main Street glowed in a sea of orange in the afternoon sun, several outdoor student partiers glowed orange themselves—not by the color of pumpkins or vibrant tee shirts, but in the mist of pepper spray.
The incidences began with a phone call of complaint from a resident on Wilcox Terrace.
Keene Police Sergeant Steven Tenney said KPD responded to a call from a concerned Wilcox landlord about his property while a home on the street partied with approximately 500 guests outdoors.
Tenney also said an elderly woman complained that beer bottles were being thrown at her house and people were urinating on her property. Tenney said it was these two calls that led KPD to KSC junior Max Senew’s home on Wilcox Terrace.
Senew approximated he had 500 people at his home on Saturday afternoon. Senew said the music had been going for about two and a half hours before police entered the scene.
Senew explained, “The way it happened was one cop just kind of started walking through the middle of the party. People were just trying to avoid him—there was a big circle around him.” Senew said that although his party may have been a little loud, he said it was contained and people were generally being respectful before the police made an appearance.
According to Tenney, a group of four to six officers approached Wilcox Terrace with a PA system telling partygoers to leave.
Tenney explained, “They had people on a PA because they had DJs and stuff telling them not to leave,” the sergeant continued, “So what happens in that case is clearly we’re outnumbered. In the case of Wilcox Terrace, there was a single officer there and they were completely refusing to cooperate with him and essentially surrounded him to the point where we couldn’t even find him.”
At that point, according to Tenney, the officers went through a procedure of moving people off the property.
Tenney explained the officers made anywhere from six to eight announcements to the crowd.
Tenney described, “After a handful of those announcements, we kind of step up our announcements to the point where this is now not a lawful party you guys need to leave, and we actually display the pepper spray and we tell people that pepper spray is going to be deployed.” At this point, the officers displayed their pepper spray.
He continued, “Clearly what happens is when people see an orange mist go out into the air it creates a little bit of panic. It’s not to say that people didn’t feel the effect of pepper spray, I felt it myself, but it wasn’t directed at anyone.”
Tenney explained the spray was shot straight up into the air. He said the wind carries the spray, and depending on where someone might be, they may or may not be affected.
Tenney explained a misconception he heard from many students and said that the officers did not spray mace.
He said, “They [the students] call it mace, they think it’s a chemical agent, everything we use as far as the Keene police and pepper spray—there’s no man-made chemicals, it’s a water-based spray that contains a hot pepper. It’s not mace, it’s not tear gas, it’s completely natural and not man-made or anything like that. It does create some problems for people–people standing down wind.”
In the case of Wilcox Terrace, Senew claimed he heard no warnings or requests from police before the pepper spray.
Senew said, “I’m pretty sure they literally just walked onto the property into the middle of the party and they just started pepper spraying. I don’t think they really made any effort to really try to figure out who owned the property, they just walked through the yard.” Senew continued and said he thought the pepper spray was “over the top,” as his party was, in his opinion, contained.
Senew’s housemate, junior Ben Tirlia, agreed and said the pepper spray was “unnecessary.”
Senior Matthew Carson attended the party on Wilcox Terrace. Carson said he witnessed several cops “just waltz into the backyard and tell everyone to finish or dump their beer and leave.”
Carson said he spoke to one officer and said, “One came up to me personally and said very angrily to dump out my beer and please leave. I was like, ‘I’m 21, I don’t really care.’” Carson said he witnessed a majority of the party shouting “[Expletive] the police.”
Carson said the party was “nothing outrageous” and said everyone in attendance was being smart.
Tenney stated the second home officers sprayed was at the residency of KSC senior Andrew Morris, at 18 Blake Street.
Morris said he and his housemates planned to host a party for Pumpkin Fest and registered their party with Keene Police Department in anticipation for Saturday.
According to Tenney, on Saturday afternoon KPD received a call from a renter on one side of the Blake Street duplex who asked police to disband the party because it had “gotten out of hand.”
Tenney said the caller claimed their house and cars were being bothered, and people whom they did not know were entering their house. Tenney said the caller “requested assistance in gaining control back to their property.”
Morris said his party began to overflow just after the party on Wilcox was broken up. At that time, according to Morris, he approached a cop passing by and was told by the cop that he should shut down the party. Morris claimed he then turned the music off and began telling his guests to leave.
“We were trying to work with the police and cooperate,” Morris explained. The senior said within five minutes of his efforts to move people off his property, four cops entered his backyard and began spraying.
“I never heard a warning from them. I asked a few kids who were back there, if they heard them– it was pretty loud and people were talking. [The police] only said it a couple times,” Morris said.
At Blake St., Tenney explained, there were plenty of people in attendance who were “there to have a good time, not causing any problems.” Tenney said this was “typically the majority,” at parties like the one held at Blake. But Tenney explained the pressure from the homeowners and the fact that the cops were outnumbered is what led to the use of the pepper spray.
Morris said that once everyone moved off the property, he and his housemates attempted to talk to the officers.
He said, “They really didn’t tell us anything. They started being disrespectful to us—even though we were the owners of the house they refused to talk to us or give us any reason. We were trying to talk to us and be respectful and they wouldn’t hear a word from us.”
Morris continued, “From our side, I think it would have been enough just having the presence of the police in the uniforms would have been enough to kick us out. It was less than five minutes from the time we killed the music and they started spraying, they didn’t give us time to clear out. We were trying to work with them and we did comply and turn off the music and ask people to leave; we thought it was excessive force to spray.”
Tenney commented and said he has seen KPD use pepper spray during the Red Sox riots in the past. “That’s the same type of situation,” he said. Commenting on the 2012 Pumpkin Fest, Tenney said it did not seem any more out of control than other years.
He said, “I think it’s the norm for what it has evolved into for the last couple of years. It’s comparative to what it was last year.”
But for the six or seven hundred who were sprayed, this year’s Pumpkin Fest reigns over years past.
Julie Conlon can be contacted at
jconlon@keene-equinox.com.