OK—What's A "Wilding"?

Guest Commentary By Alex DeLarge
When I viddied these gloopy bratchnies in the gazetta today, your humble narrator just had to guff.

Not because they were my droogs. No, my brothers, what surprised me was the weird slovo I'd never slooshied before.
The Oregonian: "Portland police looking for suspects in 'wilding'"
KGW: "Five people were beaten and robbed by a roaming band of attackers in what police called an early morning wilding spree in North Portland..."
KOIN: "...The next stop in the Wilding Spree was punching a car passenger delivering early-morning newspapers, then beating a pedestrian on North Lombard Street."
Real horrorshow. But I submit that it would be more clear, and fair, to just call it a crime spree. "Wilding" is what wolves and gorillas and other such beasts do.
Turns out the funny slovo itties back to the Central Park jogger case. From Columbia Journalism Review:

"Wilding — the newest term for terror in a city that lives in fear," announced the New York Post on April 22. "Wilding" was defined by the Post writers as a phenomenon not unlike the violent raves in A Clockwork Orange — "packs of bloodthirsty teens from the tenements, bursting with boredom and rage, roam the streets getting kicks from an evening of ultra-violence. ... "
The jogger case planted "wilding" into the English lexicon, a term that came to define the inhumanity of these kids. But it was never clear where it came from — the kids, the police, or the media ozone. "The word seemed to come out of the ether," remembers [David] Krajicek, a former professor at Columbia's journalism school and author of Scooped: Media Miss Real Stories on Crime while Chasing Sex, Sleaze and Celebrities.

Fancy that!