By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
With just a few more seconds to go, everyone at Staples Center
knew it was certain: the Los Angeles Lakers were the world
champions.
In Westwood Village, as the game clock counted down, sealing the
Pacers’ fate, Laker fans poured out of Maloney’s On Campus, joining
their counterparts downtown in one of the biggest "celebrations"
the city has ever seen.
But the celebrations soon turned into mob rule as rioting broke
out downtown and in Westwood where local residents and visitors
hurled glass bottles, knocked over trash cans and newspaper stands,
and broke into fights.
When everything was over, two officers suffered from light
injuries and one man, who was not a UCLA student, was arrested for
battery of a police officer.
"This is taking fun a little too far," said Rebecca Miskey, a
Long Beach resident who was in the village during the
disturbance.
The celebration began with yelling and pounding on newspaper
stands as groups of people gathered on each side of the street at
the intersection of Gayley and Weyburn avenues. As the light turned
green, students on each side ran to the middle of the street and
gave each other high-fives and shouted.
The crowd swelled to a couple hundred people as those who
watched the game elsewhere joined the celebrations.
As people gathered, they began blocking off traffic and some
began violently rocking and trying to tip over a car that was
driving north on Gayley Avenue.
About 30 officers from the Los Angeles Police Department arrived
a short time after with helmets and tear gas guns.
At 11 p.m. – about two hours after the Laker game ended – Lt.
Andre Dawson, the officer in charge, gave an order to disperse and
officers began clearing the streets.
"At that point it became a fluid kind of deal; we just tried to
get them out of Westwood without any property damage," Dawson
said.
When police arrived, some students said things started getting
out of control as students reacted to their presence, much like
what was happening downtown at the time and what happened during
fall quarter’s Midnight Yell.
"People were trying to celebrate," said Jonathon Younton, a
second-year business and economics student. "Nothing bad was
happening; then the cops came."
Police began cornering the crowd trying to force them out of
Westwood and away from anything it could vandalize.
As the crowd was pushed down Weyburn Avenue and then down
Kinross Avenue, it became more confrontational.
Those who had earlier yelled praises of the Lakers began
shouting at the police.
But the yelling and the shooting off of fireworks degenerated
into thrown glass bottles, and vandalized restaurants, news racks
and trash cans. One officer was hit on the head but was wearing a
helmet at the time.
The crowd threw chairs from in front of B.J.’s Bar and Grill
into the middle of the street, forcing cars to drive around
them.
Several people started grabbing dumpsters from the alley leading
from Broxton Avenue to Gayley Avenue launching them into the
street, nearly hitting several cars.
One student climbed on top of the dumpster in the middle of the
street and waved his arms as other students flooded the street,
cheering in defiance of the police.
"Our concern was to try and get between them and the dumpsters
so they wouldn’t set it on fire," Dawson said.
To try and further disperse the crowd, the police came up
Broxton Avenue to Le Conte Avenue and down Weyburn Avenue to
Westwood Boulevard. The crowd then fled to the intersection of Le
Conte and Gayley avenues, a block north from where they had
originally gathered.
Even after the damage had been done to the village, Janet Kerr,
a local resident who was cleaning up trash that had been strewn
along Le Conte Avenue by the mob said it was mostly harmless.
"It’s just college mischief," she said.
The rioting and street closure of the village didn’t hurt
businesses like B.J.’s, which only suffered minor damage to their
outdoor furniture. However, Maloney’s – at the heart of the
disturbances – was forced to close at midnight, two hours before
last call.
"It was late in the night and people were pretty drunk by then
so it wasn’t a big deal when we closed," said Josh Norman, a
manager at Maloney’s.
Dawson said the disturbances Monday night were nothing like the
rioting that occurred four years ago when UCLA won the NCAA
championships.
"That was an entirely different animal," Dawson said.
By 12:30 a.m. the crowd had mostly dispersed and silence fell
over the village which had been completely shut down by the police
in the area between Westwood Boulevard and Gayley, Kinross and Le
Conte avenues.
But downtown, the rioting continued as the crowd of more than
10,000 that had gathered outside Staples Center, where the
championship was won, took to the streets.
While most fans celebrated the victory by crowding the streets
in jubilation and hanging outside of cars waving Lakers flags and
Kobe Bryant jerseys, others attacked the police and journalists in
the area.
During the course of the night, rioters set police cars,
television news vans and a MTA bus on fire and looted downtown
businesses.
In preparation for the Democratic National Convention – which is
scheduled to take place at the Staples Center in August and is
expected to be heavily protested – city officials said they will
step up police presence in the area to ensure what happened Monday
night doesn’t repeat itself.