Police, SWAT teams storm college block party with LRAD sound cannon weapons, tear gas, riot gear for no reason

Saturday, May 07, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: block party, SWAT teams, health news

(NaturalNews) The 2011 annual Wheeler Block Party at Western Illinois University (WIU) was met with brute force this year as a "multi-jurisdictional task force" was sent in to intimidate students with long-range acoustic device (LRAD) sound weapons, tear gas, riot gear, dogs, and even physical assaults -- all for no apparent reason.

Similar to what took place at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Penn., back in 2009, jackboot-style soldiers marched through the streets near WIU and flagrantly abused the Fourth Amendment rights of students, many of whom had not even done anything wrong.

According to a recent report from RTR.org's Reality Report, the annual WIU celebration was relatively peaceful throughout most of the day, with police officers present to maintain order as they normally would. But things turned ugly when those officers mysteriously left the scene for 30 minutes, leaving only a few officers behind who allegedly began allowing some rowdy students to "get out of hand" without intervening. Not long after, swarms of armed officers from various agencies arrived on the scene with military-style weaponry and gear, and began openly using it on everyone present at the event.

"Around six o'clock at night (on Saturday), the police left for about 30 minutes ... and then here come riot gear officers from the ... Illinois police agency with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) out there, Macomb police officers, McDonough County Sheriffs, and the Illinois State Police were all out with mace, dogs, they were tear gassing and macing students for no particular reason," said Julio Rausseo, a media broadcast student at WIU and member of the Young Americans for Liberty, to Reality Report. "I had a friend who was tear gassed outside of her apartment just sitting. It was out of control, officers were tackling students, and I was threatened for filming."

Besides the fact that the officers flagrantly violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the every student involved, Rausseo also emphasized that the entire party was largely peaceful until the riot gear and other brute force tactics arrived on the scene. This unnecessary intervention quickly escalated an otherwise typical college block party into a massive, unprovoked demonstration of the chilling police state in which Americans now live.

You can view the entire Reality Report interview with Julio Rausseo yourself, and see actual footage of the shocking event, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E