UC Looking to Avoid 2nd Clash With Protesters

By Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle

13 November 11

ocked and criticized, UC Berkeley administrators are softening their defense of the violent response by campus police against protesters, and say they hope to avoid similar aggression this week at a planned student walkout.

At the same time, campus police say they are investigating their response and considering whether pepper spray and tear gas might be used in future protests.

"We're extremely disturbed by the images on the video and will work very hard to not repeat the violence on Tuesday," said Claire Holmes, associate vice chancellor of public affairs, who sits on the school's crisis management team formed last year to improve their handling of protests.

UC Police Chief Mitch Celaya said he is reviewing video and interviewing witnesses to determine whether any officers should be disciplined for unwarranted use of force.

"There are tough questions to be asked," Celaya said. "Protesters don't appear in the video to be aggressive. What were we trying to accomplish?"

Since Wednesday, video images of police in riot gear ramming batons into students who had set up an Occupy Cal encampment of seven tents - just outside police headquarters at Sproul Hall - have flown around the Web and become easy fodder for late-night comedians.

"When they say Berkeley is crunchy, I didn't know they meant the students' rib cages," TV humorist Stephen Colbert deadpanned Thursday.

On Thursday, more than 24 hours after the most violent interaction with police, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau responded with a letter to students in which he said that "police were forced to use their batons" to enforce a policy against tents.

This week's clash came 18 months after a Police Review Board issued a report criticizing the way administrators and campus police handled a demonstration in 2009, in which dozens of students seized the English Department, Wheeler Hall, as thousands more surrounded the building in the pouring rain.

Overwhelmed administrators were unable to communicate a clear strategy. Poorly trained officers used batons and metal barriers as weapons against the surging, angry students.

The review board recommended several improvements for future "group acts of civil disobedience" on campus.

All dealt with communication strategies, better preparation and clearer policies. The report's authors used the word "violence" with reference to students. Police actions were characterized as "force." But there were no recommendations addressing how police should use it.

Celaya said Friday that last week's police response was more coherent than it had been two years earlier - and so was communication. Students had no doubt that they were breaking the university's rule against setting up tents. Yet students persisted.

"I hate to say this," Celaya said, "but the confrontation was almost inevitable."

On Wednesday and Thursday, campus police kept an eye on hundreds of defiant but peaceful students on Sproul Plaza but mainly let them alone as they participated in Occupy activities and planned for Tuesday's walkout, when they will protest rising tuition. Students also intend to demonstrate at next week's meeting of the University of California regents in San Francisco to protest "the 1 percent" running UC.

It was when students set up tents on three occasions that UC police and Alameda County sheriff's deputies swarmed in to forcibly remove them.

As students linked arms to "defend" the encampment, police and deputies prodded and rammed batons into the human chain. They pulled protesters by the hair and hurled some of them to other officers who cuffed their wrists in plastic ties. The sound of screams could be heard above hundreds chanting: "Stop beating students!"

Over two days, 40 protesters were taken into custody. Most were released within a day, many complaining of bruises and lacerations.

"My neck and back are so sore," said Zak Habash, a civil engineering major, who still wore his jail ID band. A thin young man, Habash said he was tackled by an officer twice his size as he clung to tent poles Wednesday. He said an officer grabbed his camera and stomped it.

After he and six others were arrested and taken into the basement of Sproul Hall, Habash said an officer "kicked my legs out from under me" before putting him in a room by himself, where he said he spent hours praying and singing.

Another arrestee, rhetoric major Zahide Atli, also described seeing Habash kicked by police.

"Their use of force was unnecessary," Atli said.

Celaya said officers chose not to use pepper spray and tear gas on protesters last week because the effects can be worse than using batons.

But as police plan for this week's protests, Celaya said, "I'm looking at it."