Excerpt: "The chancellor of the University of California, Davis 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 incident Friday."
UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters blocking a walkway in the quad on Friday, 11/18/11. (photo: Wayne Tilcock/Davis Enterprise)
"Chilling" UC Davis Video Launches Investigation
20 November 11
To View the UC Davis videos click here.
ideo surfaced online Saturday showing an officer at a California university calmly pepper-spraying 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 chancellor of the University of California, Davis 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 incident Friday.
"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 web site on Saturday.
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.
The UC Davis video images, which were circulated on YouTube and widely online, prompted immediate outrage among faculty and students, with the Davis Faculty Association saying in a letter Saturday that Katehi should resign.
"The Chancellor's role is to enable open and free inquiry, not to suppress it," the faculty association said in its letter.
It called Katehi's authorization of police force a "gross failure of leadership."
At a news conference later on Saturday, Katehi said what the video shows is "sad and really very inappropriate." The events surrounding the protest have been hard on her personally, but she had no plans to resign, she said.
"I do not think that I have violated the policies of the institution. I have worked personally very hard to make this campus a safe campus for all," she said.
Images of police evictions have served to galvanize support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Ore.
The forcible Oakland protest eviction, the first of its kind on a large scale, marred the national reputation of the city's mayor and police department while rallying encampments nationwide beset with their own public safety and sanitation issues.
Police chiefs and mayors held conference calls to discuss containment strategies in the days after the Oct. 25 Oakland eviction. The use of rubber bullets and tear gas dropped off, though police departments have turned to pepper spray when trying to quell large crowds.
Some of the most notorious instances went viral online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of women in New York. Seattle's mayor apologized to the activist, and the New York Police Department official shown using pepper spray on the group of women lost 10 vacation days after an internal review.
In the video of UC Davis protest, the officer, a member of the UC Davis police force, displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but at least one is hit in the face.
Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, "Shame on You," as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.
Ten people were arrested.
University spokeswoman Karen Nikos said nine people hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene. Another two were taken to hospitals and later released.
Nikos declined to release the identity of the officer in the video.
At Saturday's news conference, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said the decision to use pepper spray was made at the scene.
"The students had encircled the officers," she said. "They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out."
Many Twitter and Facebook comments supported the students and criticized the response.
"Stomach churning video of police using pepper spray on seated anti-Wall Street protesters in Davis, Calif.," actress and model Mia Farrow wrote in a retweet of the video.
Elsewhere in California on Saturday, San Francisco public works crews removed tents at two Occupy sites in the city.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the workers moved in on the encampments in Justin Herman Plaza and in front of the Federal Reserve Bank, removing dozens of tents on grassy areas.
There were no reports of violence, according to San Francisco police spokesman Albie Esparza. He said the action was not a raid.
Police were present but did not become involved.
In Oakland, anti-Wall Street protesters gathered for a rally and march, and vowed to set up tents at a downtown Oakland park, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with authorities.
Associated Press reporters Nigel Duara in Portland, Ore., and Meghan Barr in New York City contributed.
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
Live Occupy Wall Street Tweets
 14 May 2012
|
 14 May 2012
|
 13 May 2012
|
 14 May 2012
|
 15 May 2012
|
 14 May 2012
|
 13 May 2012
|
 16 May 2012
|
 13 May 2012
|
Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
Think about it:
1. This is AMERICA. How low do conservatives need to set the bar?
2. In the Middle-East there aren't as many cameras recording the event. Notice how angry the cops here get about those cameras. The pig in the picture above was so arrogant he didn't even care who was watching. If he wanted to shoot some “old ladies” he probably would have care who was taking pictures of it.
3. In the Middle-East, many of those victims of bullet wounds are throwing rocks at the cops. In OUR COUNTRY - AMERICA - the victims of lesser cop violence are guilty of such attrocities as holding hands, carrying signs conservatives don't like, being unarmed, and exercising their Constitutional rights.
Keep fighting for the banks and the war profiteers. Just don't be surprised when your fellow countrymen leave you behind for the immoral scum you are.
Banksters, politicos, establishment media, that is those in control who want more control. What is conservative about California? Obama? or UC Davis?
If RSN is alternative media, why not point your fingers at establishment media?
Personally, I vote for anarchy.
Every definition I can think of for American "conservativism", aligns conservatives WITH banks and those who want more control.
The need of the big money interests, and the need to further control the populace in the name of "law and order", are VERY DEFINITELY CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ideals playing out.
-------------
Also, if you want "anarchy", there's plenty of it already in Africa. Better bring an arsenal to defend your food.
AMERICAN values are NOT "anarchist", and neither are yours, to tell the truth.
The only "Anarchists" involved are just paid conservatives trying to turn a non-violent liberal movement, into something to provoke violence and turn off people watching the same "establishment media" you're pointing your fingers at.
You watch them laugh in the face of the cameras that's what, and then watch them get away with it. Just like the trash up here in Seattle who pepper sprayed the 84 year old.
They can laugh at the cameras all they like. The British occupying military brass probably thought Gandhi was hillarious. Every PATRIOT that is sprayed or shot by rubber bullets is further proof that WE ARE WINNING and they've run out of ideas how to deal with us.
The first wave of the OWS tsunami is just now hitting the shore. This is a tidal force and a few local cops ain't gonna be able to stop it - even if they commit murder in the attempt.
http://www.change.org/petitions/police-pepper-spray-peaceful-uc-davis-students-ask-chancellor-katehi-to-resign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeYHYJst-tE
Have patience.
'"The students had encircled the officers," she said. "They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out."'
These blatant lies are completely and definitively disproved by the videos. She shouldn't hold her job a day longer.
This just illustrates the astonishing stupidity and arrogance of Chief Spicuzza and, I suspect, most of the 1%-ers. Does she, or they, really think people are unable to watch the videos and conclude that she's lying through her teeth? What a crock of shit!
And Chancellor Linda Katehi's referring to this travesty as "inappropriate" is like calling the Iraq War "a disagreement."
We need more Dorli Rainey's, Naomi Wolf's, many other famous and also millions of mom's, daughters, sisters (all), wives, and grandmothers=the rest of us will support and PROTECT them=as a human, man, and former marine, I would like to find/figure out a way to act as their...security/support ? Please understand, I'm not looking for a fight-it is brought to us-
That may be the most powerful group we can muster; should their/our children be out there, too?
i honestly don't know; I do believe that the women would be the strongest against these group-punishment/brutalize one person ("leader") as example Nazi tactics.
I think the women could be so powerful, and/or at least we would really see the gov't's naked response, to demonstrations.
A country's good treatment of women is directly proportional to its success.
Perhaps something along the lines of "Lysistrata", on a more individual level; there are many things that can be done, or undone.
Other things are needed; there are a lot of smart people
"man smart, woman smarter" plus who is the true survivalist ?
We cannot give up; we just can't.
In Argentina with the Disappeared you have a very different culture (and time). Women controlled the domestic sphere of life and when they marched it was always framed as a domestic sphere situation. Women carried photos of lost and missing members of their families making it domestic rather than public sphere (political) arena. To attack the women would be to attack the division of labor by gender. Women were requesting knowledge that was rightfully theirs to request.
When I really start to worry about our situation I think about a colleague of mine in Argentina. She survived the Disappeared era and one day when discussing the USA I asked her how you survive that. She said you become unconscious about the world around you. You don't look, you don't talk, you don't think, and you never, ever notice anything. Her words haunt me.
Oh, Billy Bob, the Middle Easterners are well equipped with cameras. They've enjoyed better technology (European) with satelite phones 20 years ahead of American's Droid or IPhone technology. The reason you don't see their video is a result of 1) censorship gate keeping by corporate owned media and 2) uncoordinated technology on our side.
Does anyone have faith that her 'investigation' will fire both the cop who pepper sprayed students or the person who ordered the police action -- the Chancellor, herself -- for gross mishandling of this situation???
Lt. Pike,
You're the star! People all over the world have seen you in action. Doesn't that make you proud?
Unfortunately, millions of people think that your actions were entirely inappropriate and would like to see YOU held down and covered with pepper spray like you treated those that presented no risk to you.
So, why don't you should think about changing careers. You are a bully and a disgrace to the "thin blue line".
Shame on you...................
If you get my point, you'll see that they've encircled us in a web of intangible "rules" to scare us from doing what needs to be done. Will agents find us an pepper spray us for having the temerity to get involved? I think it is worth it at this point, because more reasonable avenues of expression have been fenced off and guarded by the oppressors.
These videos are unfortunately proof that we now live in a police state,
Corporations Are NOT People! Money Is NOT Speech! Reinstate Glass-Steagall!
Pro-Life is really Anti-Choice!
Social Security is NOT an entitlement, it is an EARNED BENEFIT!
Yes, they've been so hard on her 'personally' but she's still got to go, as well as any supervisors who condoned her actions.
Great post Billy Bob! Conservative like to be selective in who gets the freedoms and rights and who doesnt! They will be surprised someday...
How best to handle them? How about you just allow students to exercise their rights of peaceful assembly and nonviolent protest? Is that so hard to understand? Campus police should never have been turned loose on these students!
"Nikos declined to release the identity of the officer in the video."
Gee, I wonder why! It couldn't be that they're scared shitless the parents of the students he was assaulting might sue them all, now could it? That cretin should be fired immediately and then prosecuted for assault, and I hope students' parents do indeed bring legal action against him and the entire school, especially this incompetent chancellor, for authorizing brutal police force against nonviolent students.
This is the case of, what do you believe?..... what I say,... or your own lying eyes????
It is as stupid as the politicians now running for the presidency, making statement after statement flat out contradicting what they said.... in some cases a week or so ago...when they KNOW FULL WELL that there are videos of
ALL the positions they have on a given subject.
It makes you wonder,..... certainly question not just their honesty, but also their intelligence. Do they really consider us THAT stupid?????? They KNOW that we have seen all their lies.
This is head scratching time
One thing you CAN'T do is open someone else's eyes if they refuse to do it themselves.
Yesterday, UC Berkley Police Capt. Margo Bennett stated: "The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence.”
(BTW, Merriam-Webster defines violence:
- exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse
- intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force)
Then, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza gave the following excuse for her teams violent response: "The students had encircled the officers. They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out."
Both womens comments rank up right up at the top in the BS index. Both are liars and no more than pathetic puppets in the hands in the hands of their corporate masters.
We must all understand that this is the PATRIOT ACT (thousands of pages, already written and ready within DAYS of 9/11) in actual practice, a set of "laws" that is almost entirely unconstitutiona l.
PA was passed with NO DEBATE, or anything like a national discussion.
This is why Obama has said NOTHING; he is waiting for us to realize, perhaps, and ACCEPT this Nazi behavior-many of us already practice mental self-censorship/behavior "control"=that's why some get so angry when you ask them to pay attention, comment, etc. They are ashamed, and angry at you for making them remember what they did to themselves.
So, maybe Pres. Obama should be asked="Is this the way it is to be, MR. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR ??
So....they turned their backs on the "encircling students" and attacked people who were sitting on the ground. Perhaps if I went to college or at least the police academy this would make sense to me.
Lets put a faces on the enemies of Democracy!
The real chilling issue is that the Chancellor of UC Davis is so damned stupid. She knew this would happen. Like a bunch of the 1% she just didn't think she woud get caught.
Shame on her!
I would rather be dead than be one of them for ten minutes!
When the Constitutional Right to Demonstrate Peacefully is violated,
it is not any longer an internal state business for the mayor or governor to tackle.
It´s on Obama´s desk.
So please say something mister President.
Don´t forget that the American Constitution begins with:
" WE THE 99%..."
Does the First Amendment say we have rights, but expect to be electrocuted with cattle prods or sickened with Pepper Spray?
We are just a few short steps from what happened in Europe in the 1930s when the Nazi Party and the Italian Fascists beat up and brutalized protesters in the streets to pave the way for Hitler and Mussolini. Read your history. When a right-wing government controls the cops, this is how they deal with dissent.
In the USA the use of pepper spray has rules. The mercenaries (posing as cops) have no right to spray people sitting and not attacking.
I've also seen these so called cops hold a person down and another beating them
The first use of these cops in NY were funded by the Koch brothers. Koch gave the NYPD about $1M!
Shades of the brown shirts (hired guns) ./// some of us remember the history.
On another note - get registered early with mail-in ballots (and help minorities, old, etc to get the newly required IDs)
NEVER VOTE A norquist cult member. The congress people have an obligation to their OATH of office and not to an OATH to a lobbyist!
GO WI, OH, and all who see their Koch supported Gov are not in your interests.
Call your reps and tell them you want the Supremes to get the money out of politics - i.e "person hood" is not constitutional. YOU HEAR ME: Scalia/Thomas?
How can we help the minorities and the seniors in the south get the required IDs when you live in California??
I heard today on a TV program that the south has been redistricted in such a way that there are only one or two white democrats left.
their helmets, their belts with all
their stuff, their batons and they are
attacking un-armed peacefully demonstrators.
Please google:
Naomi Wolf 10 steps towards fascism.
"I obey orders" is not an excuse for criminal act.
This incident reminds me of Kent State in which a completely unjustified use of force was used against a group of student who were a complete non-threat and whose only crime was exercising their constitutional rights.
Sorry, but I don't have a lot of faith in Katehi's "investigation." In fact, I'm not even inclined to believe her reaction to the incident. Let me say it now: nothing of significance will come of this "investigation," except perhaps complete exoneration of the police and their use of force.
As for Spicuzza, this woman needs to resign yesterday! People across the country need to demand her resignation! Is she serious? How utterly stupid does she think people are? Her version of events is completely counter to reality!
Why? Because his handlers have duct tape over his mouth and are telling him he's a dead man if he acknowledges what's happening in the streets of the Greatest Country in the World!
The ruthless, amoral, murderous (it's just business, Charlie) powers that be put up mcCain/Paleo-lin and these 3rd rate carny's as pure theatric distractions/advertisers; Obama would have been impeached, at the very least, LONG AGO; if not killed, if he was unwanted in that position.
The reason he is silent/ineffective doesn't really matter very much, I think.
He still has a good opportunity to speak forcefully (though that is slipping away quickly); but, alas, he might be thinking of HIS children, instead of ours-that's what they do: FORCE horrible Hobson's choices on us; then they've already won.
'The students had encircled the officers,' she said. 'They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out.'
I am dumbfounded that she said this. Did she watch the video first, or ask anyone what happened? Her university police officer walked up to a line (not a circle) of seated students and sprayed them with pepper spray as casually as he might spray weed killer on his dandelions. Did they ask the students to let them out? What about the end of the film, where the students give them "a moment of peace" and let them out? Nothing at all about that statement is credible.
I was going to write that he might as well have been an employee of a pest control service - killing cockroaches.
(maybe they are bucking for a city or state job)
It's time to change the Pledge of Allegiance. We are not, and never have been, 'one nation, indivisable'. From time to time the divide is hidden, mostly when the 1% needs the 99% fight a war for them or something like that, but when we're not needed then the violence starts up again. Read the history of trade unionism in this "Land of the Free", just one example. Nothing changes and nothing will until we realize that all the ballot box liberalism in the world will never change anything fundamental in this country.
Once we could pretend to be a shining beacon; no one in the rest of the world is fooled anymore.
We need to remember when the Fascist Five refused to allow a handgun control law to stand in DC, arguably one of the most dangerous cities we have (but of course mostly for the poor people)
My take on it: they want, even expect some of us to start shooting each other. That would solve 2 pesky "problems for them: 'violent" citizens subj to arrest/murder, and eternal secret prisons, PLUS CONTROL OF THE NARRATIVE.
We cannot give up.
It appears there's a real disconnect here. Meantime, cops around the country appear to be receiving the same "marching orders" and sporting the same outfits and equipment. I hope someone grabs one of those cans of pepper spray. Bet you it says Made in Israel for Halliburton, USA.
All these are terrifyingly perfect examples of what Orwell, and beloved Noam Chomsky specifically warned us about: the insidious rewriting of language/definitions, and history.(Bush's statements were often altered within minutes, no doubt by a survivor of Winston Smith)
IMO, other American heroes/great people: Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Kucinich, Sanders, Lee, Waters, Grayson, police Capt. Ray Lewis, Scott Olsen, et few alia.
They did not kill MLK until he talked about war, and economic justice; he was killed supporting a labor action; and spoke his best speeches about the war, IMO.
Doublespeak is already here (pls see my above); we are starting to acquiesce to doublethink.
Like M. Moore said in Oakland, "I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'M NOT LEAVING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!
THAT'S AN AWESOME QUOTE!
These people are surely not stupid enough to believe that we little people don’t know that the elite can and do, lie like hell; even those with badges? I’ve known that to be the fact since I started thinking for myself at somewhere between ten and fourteen.
Good cops are the barrier against evil, but bad cops ARE evil and should be imprisoned ffor their misdeeds and labelled as corrupt cops and put into the general prison population so they can get a taste of their own medicine.
Dorli Rainey was in Seattle; any of these SS-types being suspended is insufficient; minimum should be prosecution and real jail time.
I do appreciate the sarcasm, though. :)
UCD's Katehi refused to step down today; there was/is a huge demonstration on campus today.
The legal strategy nationwide may the best one, currently effective.
There were TWO separate incidents involving TWO elderly women.
The bad guys are outnumbered and they know it.
By the way, it is long past time to stop calling Republicans "conservatives"; by their behavior and expressed opinions it is inarguably the case that they are fascist reactionaries. We need to properly define the people who are opposing human decency, economic justice and political emancipation. Moreover, we need to accept the fact that these people will do absolutely anything to shut down protest. No degree of violent repression is off the table; it's only a matter of time and opportunity. If anyone believes this is left-wing paranoia, I would refer that person to the 1995 Chase Bank memo, re: the Chiapas uprising in Mexico. Chase told the Nexican government that they should "eliminate" the Zapatistas. That is just one example; there are many others, such as the COINTELPRO ops against the Black power groups in the 60s and 70s. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered in their beds by the FBI.
RSS feed for comments to this post.