Pepper spray students.. what the @#%^

[adoucette]

Or, the other way to look at it, is they warned them they were going to get sprayed so as to keep anyone from getting a direct spray in the eyes, the protesters all had their hoods up and their heads down when sprayed, and yet it still stung enough to bring this to an end, and everyone went home that night with no serious injuries, a great story to tell, and if my experience from the late 60s is any indication, I'm pretty sure most if not all the guys in that line got laid that night. All in all, a pretty much a win/win.

 

[Gustav]

yeah
and just think of all the stories they could tell their grandkids
also what of the page views generated for sci from this incident?

i see nothing but big pluses :thumbsup:

 

[quadraphonics]

We don't know what would have happened if they had not used the spray and started arresting the students, who greatly outnumbered the police and were chanting that they would let the police go and only be peaceful if they let those already arrested go, and instead of the spray they had used physical force (like battons) for control.

We also don't know what would have happened if the authorities had simply contented themselves to allow a peaceful protest to continue, rather than turn up and start arresting people and using force.

You seem to take it for granted that this event simply had to be broken up, by force or otherwise. But this hasn't been established - where was the threat to public order that justified this crack-down in the first place?

You notice how the administration backed way off after this blew up in their face, and instead blamed the cops for escalating? Not really the actions of an authority that is confident that it was basically in the right to be trespassing against student speech, are they? Rather, it looks for all the world like the actions of a stodgy, conservative authority that wants the kids to, literally, "get off my lawn."

 

[adoucette]

Yup, if people are occupying an area and blocking public access and won't move when requested to by the police and then surround the police in large numbers and start chanting "we'll let you go IF....", why then we'll just wait until they decide to let the police go, after all the right to protest obviously trumps all other rights anyone has in this country.

 

[Trippy]

Cliffnotes version from: Sometimes, When "All the Facts are In," It's Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report

• The protesters warned the university that they were going to be protesting two weeks in advance
• Under California law, when planning an operation like this, there's a checklist they're supposed to follow when writing the operational plan, specifically to make sure that they don't forget something important. Nobody involved was even aware that that checklist existed.
• The most important thing that the checklist would have warned them about was do not screw up the chain of command... ...By law, the officer in charge of the scene is not supposed to get directly involved. He or she (in this case, he) is supposed to stand back where he can see the whole scene, and concentrate on giving orders, and everybody else is supposed to refrain from giving orders. Officer Nameless instead ignored his responsibilities, and waded in, and so did Lt. Pike; Chief Spicuzza sat in her car half a block away, communicating with the radio dispatcher by cell phone, and at one time or another, all three of them, Officer Nameless and Lieutenant Pike and Chief Spicuzza were yelling out contradictory orders.
• The student protesters had, with the help of Legal Services, gone over all the relevant state laws, city ordinances, campus ordinances, and campus regulations and concluded that no matter what the Chancellor thought, it was entirely legal for them to set up that camp. When the university's legal department found out that Chancellor Katehi was going to order the camp removed, they thought they made it clear to her that the students were right.
• It is illegal for anybody to lodge on the campus without permission, but the relevant law only applies to people trying to make it their permanent dwelling. The law prohibits non-students from camping on campus for any reason, but neither student affairs nor the one cop sent to look could find any non-students who were there overnight.
• Chancellor Katehi, on her part, "thought she made it clear" that when police ordered the students to leave, they were (a) not to wear riot gear into the camp, (b) not to carry weapons of any kind into the camp, (c) were not to use force of any kind against the students, and (d) were not to make any arrests.
• Chief Spicuzza "thought she made it clear" more than once that no riot gear was to be worn and no clubs or pepper sprayers were to be carried. What Lieutenant Pike said back to her, each time, was, "Well, I hear you say that you don't want us to, but we're going to." And they did, including that now-infamous Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer that he used.
• Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer is illegal for California cops to possess or use. It turns out that the relevant law only permits the use of up to Mk-4 pepper sprayers. The consultants were unable to find out who authorized the purchase and carrying.
• Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer has much, much higher pressure, and specifically designed not to be sprayed directly at any one person, only at crowds, and only from at least six feet away. The manufacturer says so. The person in charge of training California police in pepper spray says that as far as he knows, no California cop has ever received training, from his office or from the manufacturer, in how to safely use a Mk-9 sprayer, presumably because it's illegal. But Officer Nameless, when he wrote the action plan for these arrests, included all pepper-spray equipment in the equipment list, both the paint-ball rifle pepper balls and the Mk-9 riot-control sprayers.

​

 

[Aqueous Id]

And since when did use of pepper spray, to people he warned over and over that they would be sprayed and allowed them time to cover themselves with hoodies and put there faces down before he sprayed them, become the same as "Crushing people like bugs"?

Sprayed like bugs/crushed like bugs...same/same. Sounds like you've never been in a demonstration. I assure you hoodies will do nothing to mitigate mace. The type of dispenser he was using didn't look right at all. I believe the procedure is to stand back and create a curtain from a distance. You want them to get a faint whiff before they get the sense they're about to suffocate. A pointed release like that can create a panic.

Seems your analogy is WAY off.

Everyone went home that night.

No one sustained any serious injury.

If so, then that's fortunate for the cops and to the credit of the well behaved protesters. But it's not a justification for skirting procedure.

We don't know what would have happened if they had not used the spray and started arresting the students, who greatly outnumbered the police and were chanting that they would let the police go and only be peaceful if they let those already arrested go, and instead of the spray they had used physical force (like battons) for control.

I think we saw people being cuffed and led away didn't we? Anyway, I think your analysis is exactly the reason why the cops shouldn't have responded the way they did. The moment they started spraying was the moment they raised the ante. They are lucky there wasn't an armed lunatic in the crowd. So that's why proper procedure needs to be followed. These campus cops may never have seen as much excitement since their tours of duty in Iraq or Grenada or wherever. This was entirely different than parking tickets and drunk and disorderly party-goers. The cops had to be riding on pure adrenaline. Plans and procedures are ways to prepare against adrenaline-fueled responses. In your consideration of the what-if scenarios, you should consider what might have happened if the pepper spray had started a violent response. The other risk is stampede. In any case, if they were worried about the crowd, then they should have removed the crowd first. ANY response in front of a potentially reactive crowd is probably against procedure, whether or not they are participants in the demonstration. Anyone, even pro-law, military and vigilante types, can find their inner rebel aroused just from sudden displays of force like this. We expect more from our cops, and in general I think cops have helped build that expectation by avoiding responses like this.

 

[Aqueous Id]

That would certainly be one of the best outcomes of this situation. I know this isnt the way to do it, but would you please answer my question [above] and my post on the "what to believe" thread?
Thx.

I missed this. Yes I agree with you, how could they do it? It's hard to imagine how they thought it might stay out of the news, or how, as lower echelon campus cops, they suddenly felt the burden of military power bearing down on them because of the insurmountable public threat posed by people sitting on the pavement!