Violencia en la Avenida Universidad (Violence on my street)

Thursday night, August 20, was not a good night to be out on my street, Avenida Universidad. What started as something foolish turned into an intense brawl between the students and cops.

Word on campus on how this violent night began is that during a typical thurday night in Rio Piedras, where the streets were filled with college students hanging out in the bars and all in the street having a good time, one rather intoxicated student threw a bottle at a police officer.

This caused the police to overreact, and call back up, after back up until there were over 100 cops in the area shooting off tear gas in all the bars, in the streets, and even in my dorm area!! This gas was making it hard for people to breath, as my friends who were out in this said, and making everyone very scared.

I watched from the 10th floor of my dorms, as the cops pushed people down on the ground, and even hit some of them! Then, the cops started shooting off "bean-bag" guns and hit an innocent girl, who lives in my building, and she had to be carried in by four people, covered in blood.

This is a video taken from my dorm which you can watch some of what happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-21A19patx4

Or, this video shows the cops pushing people around:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoxT5nq6lAY&feature=related

And, you can also go to youtube.com and type in the search "Violencia en la Avenida Universidad" to see tons of other videos.

There have been strikes and protests by the students ever since then, and there are all kinds of meetings being held to do something about the Violence inflicted by the cops on innocent people standing by the scene.

It has been on Univision- spanish channel a lot in the past couple days, and is supposed to be covered nationally as well. I am just glad no one got seriously hurt in this chaos and pray that this madness can come to an end.