I had a chance recently to talk to John Klofas, criminal justice professor at RIT, about the situation at the Liberty Pole. Several local media organizations reported that approximately 200 young people met up at the Liberty Pole one afternoon a couple of weeks ago to fight or to watch. The RPD's account of the incident differs. They say the youth were headed there, but police were able to prevent anything serious from happening, although there were a handful of arrests.

Always good-humored and slightly subversive, Klofas had interesting insights to share.

Two hundred young people marching down to the Liberty Pole sure looks dramatic, Klofas says, but it's important to put it into context and to deal with the reality of the situation. The recurring disruptions at the Liberty Pole - which, police say, have been greatly curtailed by a change in busing policy - do not add significantly to the city's crime rate and haven't been associated with serious crime, Klofas says. And they're not a sign that young people are running wild and causing chaos throughout the city.

"There's a long history of taking events and reinterpreting them in ways that don't reflect the reality," Klofas says. "The one I think that's still in many people's memories is the ‘wilding' stories that came out of New York City. There were stories of young men running around assaulting everyone. In fact, there was never any data to support that."

Situations like the one at the Liberty Pole tend to feed a sense of panic, Klofas says, which leads to exaggeration about what exactly happened, how many people were involved, and the rest of it.

"Sociologists have a whole category they talk about: moral panics, where people find in these events a sort of attack and destruction of basic cultural values," Klofas says. "Then the significance of those values comes into play, and the whole situation gets exaggerated."

"You just have to be careful, I think, not to over-dramatize things like this," he says. "There are urban conflicts, of course, but the idea that there are hundreds and hundreds of people engaged in coming downtown to meet to fight doesn't seem like it would match up to reality very well."