Minimal damage occurred around East Lansing, police said, despite 12 fire-related incidents reported immediately after Monday’s game.

Loud and proud

In the first few minutes after MSU’s win over Connecticut on Saturday, hundreds of fans sprinted from the Cedar Village apartments to the corner of Cedar Street and Waters Edge Drive. The crowd peaked at about 2,000 people.

A similar scene took place Monday night after the team’s loss to North Carolina. About 1,700 people ignored below-freezing temperatures to celebrate a successful Spartans season.

“Our students did behave well, and they, for the most part, were responsible for their actions, which is what we’ve been harping on all along,” Capt. Kim Johnson of the East Lansing Police Department said.

Johnson said approximately 22 percent of those arrested following Saturday’s game were MSU students, a decrease from the 2008 Cedar Fest riot, during which about half of the 52 arrests were MSU students.

“(We are) a little disappointed in the standpoint that, after a good season, some small fires are started for no apparent reason,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the majority of reports he saw from the 12 fire-related incidents were to property less than $50 in value. Johnson said police are still compiling an estimate of total damage.

MSU’s campus also had a relatively quiet night Monday, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said. She said she received one crime report but had not had the chance to review it as of Tuesday afternoon.

A view from the other side

Following Monday’s game, celebrations in Chapel Hill, N.C. led to crowds of more than 45,000 people in the streets, with numerous fires, people climbing street signs and light poles, and beer spraying through the crowd. But despite the much rowdier atmosphere, police made just two arrests.

Johnson explained the discrepancy in arrests as a difference in strategy.

“Every community is responsible for coming up with a plan, and theirs might have been, ‘Let it go and let people do what they do,’” Johnson said.

“Our plan was to hold individuals accountable for their behaviors. … We’re pretty happy with our numbers.”

Planning and strategy

After post-Final Four celebrations in 2005 resulted in a disturbance in which many said police used excessive force, East Lansing police revised its crowd control strategies.

Instead of treating a large gathering as a single problem, police began targeting individual offenders, only arresting those who blatantly break the law.

The change in policy came after a review commission was formed to investigate police actions and make recommendations for future crowd-control efforts.

Among the recommendations was greater use of technology in identifying specific individuals, delaying use of riot gear as long as possible and creating escape routes for injured and arrested individuals.

Roy Muhammad, owner of Detroit-based Courtesy Crowd Control Inc., said
having a sense of the area being protected is key to keeping large crowds under control.

“The thing to do to make things easier is to have a good layout and where you can push the crowd in which direction,” Muhammad said.

Muhammad said making police presence known also is key. He said knowing police are on hand usually is enough to deter people from acting out.

That strategy was in full use this year, with police in and around the crowd in Cedar Village interacting with revelers, snapping photos and arresting offenders.

And the jovial mood of this year’s crowd might have worked in the favor of police, Muhammad said.

Healing a black eye

After making it through a Final Four weekend without a single tear gas canister deployed, administrators and East Lansing officials praised students for their behavior.

MSU president Lou Anna K. Simon issued a statement on the university’s Web site thanking students for celebrating peacefully.

“We have often said that Spartans celebrate with class, and that is exactly how we did it this year,” Simon said.

East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis said the work done by community groups to change the way celebrations occur is paying off.

“Understanding what constitutes responsible behavior and what constitutes otherwise is a very responsible step the city has taken, and it’s been responded to by students,” he said.

Staff writer Jeff Kanan contributed to this report.