While driving to Madison on Saturday for its annual Halloween party, sophomore Rich Benson and his friend Andy Serch began joking about what it would be like if a riot broke out.

Little did they know that the night would actually end in rioting, looting and clouds of tear gas.

At least 10 people, including eight police officers, were injured and 18 were arrested when party-goers started looting, throwing bottles, pulling out street signs and smashing windows early Sunday morning along State Street in Madison.

Damage estimates are expected to exceed tens of thousands of dollars as a result of the destruction. The Halloween party crowd was estimated at 65,000 with 105 police officers to control it.

Serch said he saw people throw bottles and even a big trash barrel at windows.

Benson witnessed the events unfold on State Street underneath a second story apartment building. Around 1:30 a.m., he and some friends noticed a large crowd gathering in front of them, which they could not get through.

“We looked up and saw some girls flashing from a second story window,” Benson said. “Everyone was cheering on the streets.”

The majority of the people on the street were drunk, college-aged men, Benson said. They were the people who started to get rowdy when the girls stopped lifting up their shirts, he said.

Then a man flashed his middle finger from the same second story window and another man mooned the crowd. This is when the crowd started to get out of control and throw things, Benson said.

“I think they might have been throwing rocks,” he said. “I even saw a large branch of a tree get thrown at the window.”

During this time, Benson said he saw cops standing nearby watching the scene unfold. He said the cops were “not doing a damn thing.”

Eventually Benson and his friends decided to leave State Street. On the way, they ran into about 20 or 30 more police officers, without riot gear because there was no looting or fires happening at the time.

Benson said he was “not surprised it got out of hand later,” based on what he had seen earlier.

Although Eau Claire never has experienced a riot the magnitude of the one in Madison last weekend, the police force here is prepared to handle such an event if one should ever occur, said Jack Corey, Eau Claire Police Department community relations officer.

So far, though, Eau Claire police have not had to use their resources to control crowds.

“When the drinking age was 18, crowds would get crazy on Water Street so they would have to block off streets to contain the crowds to two blocks,” Corey said.

Changing the legal drinking age to 21 took a lot of drinkers and potential problem-causers out of the equation, he said.

As for Halloweens, Eau Claire never has experienced any major problems. Students may have noticed barricades lying on streets surrounding Water Street this past Halloween, which were placed there as precautionary measures, but none were used, Corey said.

One reason students never get out of hand on Halloween is that the weather never seems to cooperate, Corey said.

“It never fails on Halloween,” he said. “The weather has always turned to garbage. It takes the spunk right out of you. Staying out on the street is not comfortable.”

Although Eau Claire has experienced basic crowd control issues with people spilling out of the bars onto streets, police usually just let the bar patrons party themselves out, Corey said.

“We’re equipped; we’re capable; we’re trained to deal with crowd control issues,” he said. “We’ve always had big crowds, but we’ve never had to contain them.”

For Serch, Eau Claire’s Halloween festivities may not be as exciting as Madison’s, but the safety may make up for it.

“I thought either people are gonna start shooting,” Serch said, “or SWAT teams are gonna come.”

-The Associated Press contributed to this report.