Angered Elis Assert Police Riot Tactics Needlessly Brutal

NEW HAVEN, Mar. 16--"For an hour yesterday afternoon," reported the Yale Daily News in its Sunday extra on the weekend snow riots, "New Haven had all the appearance of being a city at war."

The trouble began at the end of the St. Patrick's Day parade Saturday afternoon when an undergraduate crowd, perhaps upset by the tough handling of rioters during Thursday's outbreak, loitered in the streets and threw a few snowballs at a group of massed New Haven police. Joined by motorcycle units and supported by fire-hoses, the police, using their clubs freely, charged the crowd.

In the struggle which followed, 16 people were arrested and students and instructors were beaten by the police. Many required medical attention, and one sophomore, Robert L. Prince, after being booked, was permitted to go to the hospital to receive eight stitches for multiple head lacerations.

One of the outstanding incidents of alleged brutality occurred after Thursday's riot. In a sworn statement given to the university police, two freshmen charged that the city police had attacked them following their arrest. "As we drove away," one reported, "the officer who had arrested me turned around and hit me in the mouth. When we got to the corner and stopped for a traffic light, he turned around and hit me again." His companion, they alleged, was later beaten when the car stopped in an alley behind the police station.

While recognizing the faults of the students in provoking the riot with snow, jeers, and Nazi flags, many New Haven citizens and university officers have joined students in condemning what has been called "storm-trooper tactics" on the part of the city police, one of whom triumphantly observed, "These guys started the fight, we won it."