After Kentucky defeated Kansas to win the 2012 men's basketball national championship, the party got rowdy in a hurry back in Lexington. Just as they did during the riot following the Wildcats' win over Louisville in the Final Four, overeager -- and, in some cases, overserved -- fans flooded the streets of Lexington. According to Lexington police spokeswoman Sherelle Roberts, several dozen arrests were made within minutes of the game's conclusion.
Having just dealt with the couch burning and car flipping following Kentucky's national semifinal win over intra-state rival Louisville, the local police had a preview of what they would be dealing with as Monday evening gave way to early Tuesday morning.
Again couches were ignited during celebrations and police found themselves trying to handle another volatile situation. Roberts informed The Associated Press that police had made arrests relating to criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, alcohol intoxication and setting fires within the first two hours after the game ended.
Once basketball fans tuned away from the game coverage on CBS and tired of the highlights on ESPN, many of them turned to the Internet to follow along with the mayhem in Lexington. The hashtag #LexingtonPoliceScanner became the No. 1 worldwide trending topic on Twitter shortly after 2 a.m. Within the next half hour, those listening to the live audio of the local police scanner, or just following along on the social media service, found plenty to joke about but also saw just how frightening the situation had become.
Initially, the focus of the tweets, and seemingly the police, was the proliferation of couch fires and drunken mischief. As police fanned out across Lexington, it could be hard to keep track of the myriad calls coming in and all the police codes being used. With so much going on, the star of the #LexingtonPoliceScanner feed quickly became the dispatcher. For the most part, she handled everything with an admirable calm, earning herself some unlikely admirers in the Twitterverse.
During one particularly frantic stretch, a report of a streaker was called in to dispatch within moments of another officer calling in a juvenile with a gun and no means to handle the situation. At another point during the evening, the trending term "Limestone and Virginia" gained enough strength that it became the target of Twitter spammers. This location was trending because a shooting was reported there.
Police Lt. Clayton Roberts would later confirm that one man had been wounded by a gunshot during the night, telling The Associated Press that the shooter was not apprehended and stating that the wounded man suffered serious injury that appeared not be life threatening.
HERE ARE SEVERAL TWEETS FROM THE #LEXINGTONPOLICESCANNER THREAD: