We were waiting for the video of the Veishea riots to start, giddy with anticipation. It is a tableau worth remembering: twelve teens around a table in powder blue shirts with silver police badges, seven of them with flashlights strapped to their belts. All want to be heroes.
Officer Ling leaned against the wall casually aiming a remote control at the TV he had rolled into the room on a cart. Ling was in his early 40's. He was a presence in a room like a linebacker: quiet and slow, but ready and capable of pushing you down and cuffing you in one smooth, elegant gesture. For him the video wasn't something in the future to anticipate, but something from the past on which to reflect. He had been there next to squad car 401, the car now in the shop getting a new hood and window, the car with the three bricks in the front seat and the ten thousand shards glistening in the light from the street lamps and the light from flames two blocks away at the middle of the crowd.
I had seen Officer Ling in a lot of situations. I had seen him raid a warehouse with four other officers to apprehend a man who had broken in. The man had been spotted harvesting marijuana in the field behind the building and had forced his way into the building to hide. I had seen Ling at the ready, tailing two guys who had walked out of a whorehouse, watching for any reason to pull them over. I had also seen him as a support to myself after The Shooting. I had seen Ling doing construction work on the weekend because policing didn't bring in enough money to make ends meet. And I saw him on that day in jeans and a grey t-shirt, relaxing into the wall, aiming the remote at the TV, ready to reflect on the past while we, the Ames Police Explorers, waited in anticipation for our future.
The riot had started, not as a riot, but as a street party on frat row. Veishea, the annual celebration of Iowa State University's various schools and departments started with a parade and ended with several stomachs pumped at Mercy Medical.
That year the warmth of the evening and the number of partygoers drove keg stands from the third-floor fire escape to the sidewalk, and party goers from the yards and porches into the road.
At some point mob mentality took over. Partygoers broke into neighboring homes, stealing furniture and heaping it into a bonfire in the center of the four packed blocks.
A state of emergency was declared and the police and a fire engine pressed their way toward the flames under a hail of bricks, garbage and bottles.
I scooted another inch forward in my chair and Officer Ling pressed play.