The State News has been discussing the April 2-3 disturbances for quite some time now, and often the topic has been whether police officers acted improperly. We thought we'd seen everything until some comments by East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert left us scratching our heads.

"I have heard testimony from some very credible people," he said. "I have no reason to doubt that."

Wibert bluntly said he doesn't doubt that officers were too harsh in pepperspraying and teargassing people.

Don't thank him just yet, though. To his credit, he wasn't in charge of the department during the disturbances - Louis Muhn was. But now that Wibert is chief, there hasn't been any disciplinary action taken against officers who crossed the line.

None of the five investigations into officer actions during the April 2-3 disturbances have found any wrongdoing. Out of the five, three were inconclusive and the other two concluded that the officer or officers acted in the right.

Something isn't adding up here. Wibert said some officers went too far, yet there isn't anything being done to correct the situation. One of the reasons for this discrepancy might be that the investigations are being conducted internally by the police department.

It's a dubious logic that the department can properly discipline itself for lack of discipline. Part of this problem might be that the offenses seem somewhat minor. Tear gas and pepper spray don't cause much lasting bodily harm - that is, if canisters aren't shot directly at a person, which happened several times during the disturbances. Still, it's not acceptable to use these chemical agents without due cause.

When thousands of students return to East Lansing this fall, there ought to be an explanation for why there is no ongoing disciplinary action when even the police chief believes that justification for police action, in many cases during the disturbances, didn't exist. There needs to be a change in policy.

At the most basic level, the officers in riot gear need to have some kind of identification in order to guarantee accountability. The East Lansing police officers on duty during the disturbances had identification numbers on their helmets, but many from the other departments did not. Furthermore, their normal identification was often hidden under riot gear.

Deliberately or not, the police made it hard to investigate any wrongdoing by simple anonymity.

If the police want to appear professional and trustworthy, they'll have to do better than this.