A letter to Ames Mayor Ted Tedesco from officials at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy complimented the Ames Police Department on its handling of the April 18 riot in Campustown.

“We believe the tactics used by the officers were sound,” the letter said.

The letter, signed by Arlen Ciechanowski, assistant director of the academy, is the result of a request by student, community and school officials to have a third party investigate the performance of police officers in dispersing the crowd in light of allegations that officers used excessive force.

“Based upon the information provided to us, the Academy feels that the officers of the Ames Police Department exhibited remarkable restraint with regard to the amount of force that was used against the rioters,” the letter said.

Ciechanowski listed five suggestions for the department to better handle any future public disturbances on the scale of the riot:

1. Employ an amplification system to communicate with crowds for dispersal in an unlawful assembly.

2. Assign a supervisor to each squad of law enforcement with communication capability to a central command center.

3. Establish and maintain a command post as soon as practical.

4. Evaluate chemical munitions with regard to the types that were most effective and ensure that adequate supplies are available.

5. If departments other than the Ames Police Department could potentially become involved in these situations, multi-jurisdictional training, coordination and planning should continue to occur.

Tedesco said he was pleased with the academy’s findings and that the results spoke well of the city’s police force.

“I think it shows that the department is progressive, up-to-date and keeping at the forefront of the dignity of how to handle events like this as humanely as possible,” Tedesco said. “This is important to the welfare of all the community, and we certainly endeavor to follow through with their suggestions.”

Ames Police Chief Loras Jaeger also expressed satisfaction with the report and said the department was more than willing to act on the academy’s suggestions.

Some of the suggestions recalled problems the department faced during the riot. A public address system, for example, was used early in the riot, but not later.

“The problem was, we were using the paddy wagon as a loudspeaker initially, but it was then used to move some of the people we arrested,” Jaeger said. “What happened then is we ended up the next day with a lot of hoarse policemen. They’d lost their voices after shouting down the line for people to disperse.”

Jaeger said he hoped the closing of the investigation would precipitate progress in the ongoing effort to protect Ames from future outbreaks of violence.

“We’re certainly very open to scrutiny, and we hope everyone else is open to dialogue in solving these issues,” Jaeger said. “The police are a part of this community, and we don’t want to be part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution.”

In the letter, Ciechanowski wrote there was no reason to lend credence to the theory that the police presence exacerbated the riot.

Student leaders expressed little surprise at the academy’s verdict.

“From what I’ve heard from students, there may have been some individual officers that got out of control,” said William Rock, Government of the Student Body vice president. “But the department as a whole, there was nothing untoward about their actions.”

GSB President Sophia Magill said the report meant it was time to focus on other views of the riot.

“It was important that we had an outside perspective, and now that we find it’s similar to what has already been said, we as students need to be a little more forthcoming in embracing other perspectives,” she said.