Officials at the University of Maryland College Park are understandably concerned over an incident Saturday in which campus police used pepper spray to disperse a crowd of young people attending a graduation party at a student apartment complex. It's troubling whenever police resort to force to resolve problems on campus, and UM President Wallace D. Loh was right to order a thorough investigation into the incident. University officials need to get to get to the bottom of what happened and share the results with the school community and the public as quickly as possible.
Campus police say it's not unusual for officers to respond to complaints of loud music or gatherings where underage drinking is suspected; most calls are quickly resolved after officers put a stop to the party and send the revelers home. What was different about Saturday's incident are allegations that excessive force was used and that it was directed against about 60 African-American students who say they were unfairly targeted because of their race.
Investigators are still piecing together the sequence of events that unfolded early Saturday at a student apartment building on Bottler Lane. Campus Police Chief David Mitchell said officers responded to a 911 call reporting a fight at that location. The first two officers to arrive encountered the 911 caller outside the building, and when they asked whether there were any weapons in the apartment they were told there might be a baseball bat.
The officers then knocked on the door of the apartment and asked a young woman who answered whether there was a fight inside. She denied anyone was fighting and said the gathering was a graduation party. But she declined to give officers permission to enter the apartment and verify that no one was injured or in medical distress. By this time other officers had begun arriving on the scene.
What happened next is unclear. Chief Mitchell said one of the officers ordered the partygoers to vacate the premises, and as people began to leave one of the officers became trapped in a large group of young people in a hallway. Apparently that's when another officer discharged pepper spray to disperse the crowd. Police then called EMS workers to tend to those affected by the chemicals, but a few minutes later officers discharged a second burst of pepper spray to scatter a crowd gathered near one of the EMS vehicles.
One of the questions investigators must answer is whether the use of pepper spray was appropriate given that there was no evidence a fight had occurred other than the report of the 911 caller, which may or may not have been reliable. In any case, some partygoers accused police of deliberately targeting their gathering because they were black and complained officers never would have treated white students the same way under similar circumstances. Chief Mitchell acknowledged the use of pepper spray is unusual in such situations but insisted his officers were reacting to the students' behavior, not their race.
Investigators will be poring over hours of video recordings from body cameras on the 11 campus police officers who eventually were involved in the incident, which lasted less than 20 minutes. The camera images, which show different aspects of the same scene from multiple viewpoints and under different conditions, will be combined with officers' statements and the 911 call records to compile a comprehensive report of what happened. Then Mr. Loh and Chief Mitchell will have to determine whether the use of pepper spray was justified under the circumstances, or whether officers engaged in an excessive use of force that requires disciplinary action.
Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. But College Park's effort to promote greater inclusiveness and diversity among its faculty, student body and staff — including its campus police — clearly has suffered a setback at a time when the school is trying hard to celebrate those virtues on campus. That effort must continue regardless of the outcome of the investigation into this incident, and school officials can help assure that will happen by laying out all the facts of this case publicly and acting on them promptly.