From the Washington Post:
SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters sitting on the ground supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement on the campus of the University of California, Davis took a face full of pepper spray at close range from an officer in riot gear in an incident that was captured on cellphone video and spread virally across the Internet Saturday.
UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi described the video images as “chilling” and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the Friday police action.
However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force “fairly standard police procedure.”
In the video, an officer dispassionately pepper-sprays a line of several sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.
“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s website Saturday
The pepper spray was way over the line in this video. One has to wonder how the availability of cell phone cameras and video will impact how much campus and municipal police will get by with. In this video it is easy to pick out which officers enjoy the brutality end of law enforcement. It isn’t many but those who do abuse their power are obvious.
There was one in this video who I thought for a minute was going to pepper spray his own officers.
There is a thin line here. There has to be law and order on campuses. But you just don’t pepper spray people who are not being violent. If that is standard police behavior then the standard needs to change.
Hmmmm–some pepper spray to clear out what looks like road-blockers vs. unfettered mob rule. I can tell you that if I saw my own kid in that video, taunting and advancing on police officers in what looks like an increasingly uncontrolled situation as the video advances, the tuition stream would dry up instantaneously. Yep, they would have to go out and find what many of us refer to as a “job.”
Is this what America is coming to?? What seemed to be a peaceful protest, people sitting on a sidewalk – are just pepper sprayed!! You can no longer protest in America peacefully.
This is wrong. Arrest them if you must – but pepper spraying peaceful protesters (and firing rubber bullets in a video link I previously posted) is WRONG.
Question – why are the Police showing up in riot gear – When the Police show up in Riot gear, they are going to get a different reception than if they show up in regular uniforms – Why riot gear to an peaceful OWS demonstration, and regular gear to a Tea Party demonstration? Is ti because the Police are afraid the Tea Party demonstrators are packing?
I think I am beginning to understand why Gov Walker did not want to attack the Police Benefits, the way he attacked the Teachers Benefits.
A lot of big protests turn into a “protestors vs. police” event. Notice how the message the protestors wish to bring is no longer in the headlines. It’s about police vs. protestors.
Q. Why are the police showing up in riot gear?
A. Selective video editing. Do you really believe the whole story is being told here?@Pat.Herve
And that does not appear to be a sidewalk to me. It looks like a road or some kind of vehicle access.
Sieg Heil and Pepper Spray, huh? I don’t see any problem with this. Oh, wait, there is this one thing! In the “Sieg Heil” scenario, it wouldn’t be pepper-spray, it would be a 9mm kurz pinging around in the protester’s brain-case. Other than that minor difference, it’s exactly the same!
My only beef with this scenario is that tasers are MUCH more entertaining! If I’m going to watch a video of these smelly hippies, I want to see them flopping around like fish out of water.
Since the article didn’t say otherwise, I’ll assume that these were campus police officers. How well trained are they? Is there a natural tension between students and that force? There certainly will be after this incident. The officer who pepper sprayed the seated protestors should be fired – at the least.
It’s ignorant to think that one can pepper spray students armed with today’s video capability and not look exactly as they did – extreme.
The news showed the authorities breaking up protests in Syria, Egypt and UC Davis yesterday and what was interesting about the contrast was that there wasn’t a great deal of contrast in how authority responds to dissent in the greatest country on earth, a dictatorship, and a military-run government.
“Why riot gear to an peaceful OWS demonstration, and regular gear to a Tea Party demonstration? Is ti because the Police are afraid the Tea Party demonstrators are packing?”
Really? You believe that?
Hmmmm…if the police were afraid of the TP and thought that they were armed….they would react with SWAT.
The Tea Party don’t harass cops, riot, block roads, or commit violence. THAT’s why the police don’t wear riot gear.
Is this over the top….could be. I wasn’t there, its not clear where the OWS are sitting, and we haven’t seen the video in context.
If they are sitting on a sidewalk or park…yes. If in a road. No.
Forgot, hit submit too soon.
Pepper spray may actually be the safer way to arrest them. Not for the cop but for the protester. If the cop can make them flinch and let go of each other, the cop can arrest them without having to separate them, which can result in injuries.
If they are in a park, etc…heck. Just ignore them.
It’s funny–when it suits the left, if there’s video, we’re supposed to believe it and if there’s no video, we’re supposed to believe it. Partial evidence, cut-and-paste, no evidence at all–it’s apparently all equal.
@Emma
I agree with you if taunting or advancing on the police. 100%. However, I think pepper-straying those who were sitting there was dead wrong.
@Emma
It looks like it was shot on a cell phone rather than anything fancy. There is no way that pepper spraying was faked.
This also was not an OWLS protest. It was just a campus protest in support of OWLS. (whatever that means)
@SlowpokeRodriguez
You are certainly quick to take away people’s first amendment rights.
This was on a campus and I don’t think anything was being torn up. If someone is tearing up something or injuring someone I don’t care if they are pepper sprayed. I do care if they are sprayed just sitting there. Big difference.
@cargosquid
This was a campus demonstration, not OWS. Huge difference.
I believe there was a swat team ready but not necessarily visibly on the scene the day the tea parties had the huge demonstration at the capital whenever that was. (day HCR was signed) They are smart enough and professional enough to be ready but not agressive, confrontational or in someone’s face.
Only fools parade out in riot gear when there is no need to do so. Why escalate a situation?
@Emma
Emma, there was video both professional and amateur from everywhere. Why is it ‘from the left?’ Looking at the crowd I saw literally hundreds of cell phones recording the event as well as people with huge professional equipment.
When that kid down in College Park after the basketball game got billy clubbed by several officers was he on the left or the right?
Do we just charge them with unnecessary roughness or political incorrectness?
That was very startling to see the police nonchalantly spraying people who were just sitting there. Clearly there must have been an order to forcibly remove the protesters. Usually there is no more welcoming place for a protest than a campus, particularly one in California.
So the question is, what made this protest unwelcome and why was force authorized to break it up? And if force was authorized, did the police use good judgement and discretion? It certainly did not look like the protest was becoming violent and dangerous.
I will withhold judgement until more is known, but the video by itself depicts the police as over-zealous and more confrontational than needed.
I cannot condone a Police Officer pepper spraying what looks like a peaceful protest – even if they are blocking the road. I have not seen anyone say, or video produced, of the officers trying to arrest the individuals prior to the pepper spraying. There have been other incidents very similar to this, where the Police just pepper spray the protesters, even though they are demonstrating peacefully.
see here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ05rWx1pig – here, watch the cop continue to follow one of the persons, and continue to spray them with pepper spray – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-eTi5-qNgA&feature=related – in NYC white shirt cops are the supervisors – Sergeants, Captains, etc. That Officers reaction is just Bullying and asserting authority.
I have no problem with the Officers arresting them, if they are to be arrested. Using the right amount of force that is required – I just cannot fathom walking up to protesters and just spraying them in the face with pepper spray – which can damage eyes and cause asthma attacks. If this was in some other country, we would all be saying – wow, look what they do to peaceful protesters. Each protest is different, so do not throw out the tar brush of saying that they are murder’s, rapist’s, etc.
I hope we do not have a Kent State redux.
Emma – please provide me with the entire story if you can find it – what I see in the video is no attempt to arrest them before the pepper spraying.
I don’t have the entire story, only what everyone else here has, except that the WaPo reports that these were university police. So it is likely they were acting under university orders, which changes things a bit, I would think. I’m just not in a huge hurry to condemn cops when I can’t see what happened before the spraying or know exactly what the students were doing (or whom they were trying to block).
I’m very confident that if this were a group of AARP-card-carrying and stroller-wielding Tea Partiers, that the outrage against the police would be just as strong. Right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQFEY9RIRJA
I am not an OWS supporter, nor do I really know what their point is. For me – This is America where we can protest peacefully. I do not care what group it is. It was WRONG.
We should all be standing behind the protesters exercising their first amendment right to free speech.
Cato – cute.
@Pat.Herve
Yes, but their right to free speech doesn’t supersede my right to go to the library if I want to. Likewise if the tea people were to shutdown I66 during rush hour I would hope the cops would show up and crack a few skulls.
As with all the others, if this were a bunch of kids sitting in the grass in a park then I completely agree the cops went overboard. If it is as I suspect and they were forming a human chain to block public access to somewhere or another then they got what they were asking for.
@Kelly3406
I totally agree Kelly. Supposedly the President of UC Davis is shocked. Something just isn’t right. Maybe they need to look at who is on their police force. We all know that sometimes a couple of bad apples get on a police force (or state or military) and that they soon get weeded out unless the force has a culture of over-aggressiveness.
I don’t care much for PG County police force. I have seen some things I don’t like out of there over the years. I expect they have had a real shake down after a couple of them billy-clubbed a judge’s grandson and put him in the hospital. Uncalled for. It was all caught on cell phone.
@Emma
If they were pepper spraying them? I sure would be outraged. One? I would figure that person did something to deserve it but not that many. That was just mass nastiness.
I actually paid no attention to what the students want with their demonstration. Furthermore, I wasn’t one of ‘them’ in my youth. That wouldn’t be where my sympathies lie. I would be upset if I saw Operation Rescue treated that way….and I promise you, that is sure not where my sympathies lie.
It’s about the spreay and the non violence and non-resisting, not the political issue.
Apparently, this IS standard procedure. Key part: ” “When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,” Kelly said. “Bodies don’t have handles on them.”
From Gateway Pundit:
On Friday a group of UC Davis students blocked the campus walkway with arms linked and started chanting, “From Davis to Greece, F*ck the police!“ Moments later the little darlings were doused with pepper spray. This was only after several attempts by campus police to get them to move.
A law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force “fairly standard police procedure.”
Story: Occupy protests spread to college campuses
The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed by police with batons on Nov. 9.
Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
“When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,” Kelly said. “Bodies don’t have handles on them.”
After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of “active resistance” from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.
“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said.
Personally, I think that if they were just blocking a sidewalk…ignore them completely or point and laugh.
This police reaction is what they want.
If pepper-spraying non-violent people is standard operating procedure than SOP needs to immediately change! We don’t live in a police state and peaceful protest is a first amendment right whether it is a right to life march or a KKK demonstration. We don’t have approve or like what they are saying. No one should be pepper sprayed for sitting across a walkway.
Who cares what they were saying? F*** the police might be rude, crude and socially unattractive but then there is that rascally old first amendment.
What person with brown-shirt mentality handed down that bit of brilliance? That law enforcement official should be re-evaluated. It appears he is in the wrong job if he thinks that is effective law enforcement. I hope those who got pepper sprayed sue the university.
And that police reaction will make it spread and escalate. Remember the Sixties?
If the government was half as aggressive in enforcing financial rules on Wall Street as they are in enforcing sidewalk rules on UC Davis perhaps the public wouldn’t have gotten fleeced. How can we expect our patriot job creators to get all job creatory when people are blocking a campus sidewalk? I hope I’m wrong, but if we can’t get our government to lead who is the practical alternative? Which institution does Americans trust most? The military. Look at the lead role the military played in Egypt and Libya. I can see a day when civilian control implodes and military power ascends.
“If the government was half as aggressive in enforcing financial rules on Wall Street as they are in enforcing sidewalk rules….”
Heck…Wall Street was following the gov’t’s rules. Now if we could just get the government to stop all that insider trading and giving tax money to political donors..oh, I mean…green loans.
The protesters should be camping out in front of the Capitol Building, harassing politicians, not bank employees.
These protesters were on their own campus. All protesters aren’t connected to OWLS. (yes, yes, I know…I like calling them OWLS)
Its a nasty job. Someone has to do it.
Wall Street was not necessarily following govt rules. Perhaps they were doing what the govt. didn’t prevent from happening.
All insider trading isn’t govt. insider trading.
@Cargo, don’t you really mean you want the OWLS to harrass Democratic politicians? Every time I harrass a Republican on here you defend the hell out of them.
A few thoughts.
“I’m going to watch a video of these smelly hippies, I want to see them flopping around like fish out of water.”
Pretty funny. Glad I wasn’t drinking my morning cup of wake up.
“I’ll assume that these were campus police officers. How well trained are they?”
Trained enough to be have weapons on campus. Because we all think here that only police officers should have weapons on a campus. No? Only other police officers? Wait. Which is it?
“The news showed the authorities breaking up protests in Syria, Egypt and UC Davis yesterday and what was interesting about the contrast was that there wasn’t a great deal of contrast….”
Well, except all the deaths (murders). How’s the military occupation of Egypt working out for them?
I also agree that it was safer to use pepper spray than something else. Directed energy weapons might not be a bad thing. Aim the box at the hippys, turn on and let them feel as if there skin will melt off with no lasting effects*.
I have no problem on calling out the police when I see something wrong. In this case I don’t see anything. They used a minor amount of force and it’s not like the cop got joy out of it. He did it matter of factly. The only reason his job is on the line is because his boss is now being called on to resign.
@Moon-howler
Actually, I want them to harass any politician that is responsible for the melt down and the ongoing crisis. I want them to go after any politician that is a crony capitalist or that is instituting regulations that are killing jobs…..
Hmm……that would leave the Tea Party candidates out. Go get the rest.
I saw more of the campus incident on TV today. The protesters were “defending” a tent camp.
If I had been the cops….I would have stepped over them…demolished the camp, carted it off, and ignored the protesters. If the tent demolishing provoked them….THEN break out the pepper spray.
Any of you young whippersnappers remember the movie, “PCU”?
🙂
Those students were INCREDIBLY restrained. Their anger having witnessed their friends pepper sprayed was palpable. They chanted their way to get those bastards to leave. I am disgusted, if that were my child who had been sprayed demonstrating peacefully I would sell my home to hire the best attorney possible.
Can you imagine ANY other group sitting peacefully and being treated this way? How about all those abortion protestors, ever see them get pepper sprayed? Nope, nadda, not ever. The question is why did these so called cops believe they had the right to attack the students. The officers were NOT surrounded until these kids started chanting “shame on you” and “our university”. Only by some miracle of common sense was there not bloodshed, cooler heads prevailed, and it wasn’t the cops.
Strange how so many different people saw so many different things. It appeared that innocent non-violent people where being sprayed in the face with military strength pepper spray,. The court of public opinion will not be with these cops. I saw some of them enjoying it way too much. I believe we call that saddism.
@marin, young whippersnappers indeed. LOL
One might say that it is the duty of the police to clear these vermin from the public spaces they unlawfully obstruct. I applaud our Public Sector Patriots!
Cato, on this blog college students aren’t verim on their own campus.
I find it rather refreshing to see students giving a sh!t about someone and some thing other than themselves.
From an Instapundit reader:
Reader Joshua Hall writes:
My daughter currently attends UC Davis. The media coverage of the pepper spraying incident is not giving an in depth report.
The students are protesting the tuition increases at UC Davis and standing with the Occupy Wall Street protestors.
On Tuesday student protestors occupied Mrak Hall forcing its closure (see photos 33-36 here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/20/4068847/occupy-california-campus-protests.html ). This interrupted normal administrative business that directly effected students. Student and staff safety became a real concern for campus administrators and police.
On Friday tents were removed and students asked to leave or face peppering. I do not think the police used proper judgment. Hence the video footage on the airways.
It’s big of the CTA to stand in support of the students who were pepper sprayed calling for the Chancellor’s resignation. Meanwhile, their union is working to block Chancellor Katehi’s efforts to make available on-line classes to assist student’s ability to finish their degree program in four years. In the end, the faculty is working for their security while saddling students with more debt.
My daughter is a sophomore and two of her lower general education requirement classes will not be offered until her junior year, if at all, due to budget cuts. She could be faced with needing to attend a fifth year in order to graduate. At $30,000+ per year cost of attendance, the union blocking on-line classes could get very expensive for our household. On-line classes could be a tremendous benefit.
Would be nice to see this group of students protest the union. Now that I could get behind.
________________________________
And, apparently, earlier in the week, there had been threats of possible violence and there had been other incidents.
So, if the college is going to worry about the police, why did they request the police? They knew what the procedures were.
@Cargo,
I am confused about this person’s point. I get the idea he is also. I am not sure what the CTA is. Have these people ever heard of community college? That isn’t $30k a year. In Virginnia, it’s the best deal in town! Maybe students ought to start out-sourcing these classes and picking them up from Virginia. Virtual class can go anywhere.
How do we know all those pictures in the Sacremento Bee are from the same day? That is a very conservative paper if memory serves me correctly. (big if)
I grew up during the time of campus demonstrations. For starters, these kids aren’t hippies. They are students. Sorry, they don’t get to use the term. Students demonstrate. Good for them. On the one hand we bitch about people not being involved in their government or what happens to them politically. When they do get involved they are criticized. The outliers are photographed and made to be the norm, to discredit the organization protesting.
In the pictures, one student wanted to take his country back. I have seen plenty of those signs but they weren’t being carried by students or OWLS.
Pepper spraying anyone behaving peacefully should not get pepper sprayed any more than they should get shot with firehoses and get attacked by dogs. I see very little difference. Different weapons meant to bully and control.