UC Davis Pepper Spraying Video

By on November 20, 2011 in News 46

The police use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters at the University of California Davis campus on Nov. 18 has seen many column inches devoted to it this weekend, but it’s still shocking to see the video (thanks Miles Jaffe for sharing):

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  • Anonymous

    it’s only shocking if you haven’t written freedom in America off already.

    Fairly routine, any kind of speech(sit-ins included) that is actually disruptive in any way will be swiftly ended, no questions asked.

    Sure the officers were suspended…so what, if we actually still had first amendment rights the offending cop all the way up to the chief of police would be fired if not charged with crimes. Sadly the repression will continue and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it….oh except rant on the internet YAY! I feel so much better now about my lack of right to assembly

  • Heath

    That hurt so much I can’t see, my eyes are tearing up and I wasn’t even there….Perhaps I’m not desensitized enough..

  • emperorreagan

    The optimistic part of me remembers how difficult the transitions have been throughout world history, when nations are ruled by a bunch of selfish incompetent fools.  If anything is going to change, there will be tears along the way.

    The pessimistic part of me believes the US is its end-of-empire decline into a fully totalitarian state, before it ultimately fractures into several smaller states.

  • over indulging

    wow police officers are just drones. Since they cant think for themselves they are more then  happy to let someone think for them. 

  • Tio Holtzman

    As I watch this, I can practically hear Ray Charles playing America the Beautiful.

  • Nunzio X

    Welkome to Amerika.

    Here’s a useful phrase our Corporate Masters would like us to learn. To refuse is to be pepper sprayed and then extraordinarily renditioned.  Repeat after me:

    “Wir leben, um Ihnen zu dienen, unsere Unternehmensführer! SIEG HEIL!”

  • Jarel

    I’ll just leave this here…
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjeHod8Vt-o

  • Anonymous

    And soon even the right to rant on the internet will be taken away…

  • Gergith

    What’s worse is it isn’t even logical from a policing perspective unless you wish to traumatize in hopes they won’t do it again… They STILL have to drag them away REGARDLESS of the peper spray.. It LITERALLY was not necessary… Typically that’s something you reserve for people that are fighting, NOT passive humans. THAT’”S what gets me and makes me disgusted!

  • Haystack

    Let’s start a movement to layoff police officers where this occurs. Once they start to feel some accountability toward the public they’re supposed to protect, maybe then we can actually practice our first amendment rights and get something done. 

  • Anonymous

    I am constantly… well I was going to say surprised but I’m not really surprised, it’s more like I just can’t get used to it — by the utter and sheer stupidity of the police and government response to this across the country. You know what the best thing they could have done was to bury the movement? Nothing. If they had left the protestors alone the movement would not have gotten any publicity. It’s the overwhelming police brutality that makes the camps swell like crazy the next day. It’s like “I saw a fruit fly! Where the hell is my ICBM?!”

    I forget if it was posted here or not; I’ve seen it a lot of places. The student response to the Chancellor’s press conference relating to the incident posted above: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/20/142562402/video-after-pepper-spraying-a-powerfully-silent-protest-at-uc-davis

  • Anonymous

    I can only think that’s the point. They’re trying to punish people for the affront to their personal authority and to make such a brutal example that no one else will do the same thing. These are the kind of miscalculations authoritarians make.

  • Jarel
  • Anonymous

    There needs to be assault charges and if they are not upheld it should be faught all the way to the supreme court.

  • Anonymous

    convert their pensions to funds for homeless shelters

  • Andrew

    Fascists are such cowards.

  • Anonymous

    I feel your pain…..I am leaning heavily pessimistic right now, but I still maintain a thin shred of hope

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    yes, and merciless. makes for such a dangerous combination.

  • Joseph

    byahaha fucking hippies get a job

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    and safe injection sites. that would be such a great ‘f*ck you.’

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    typical fascist-  posting a rant full of errors, mis-characterised, didn’t read the article, and of course, name calling.

  • Camron Wiltshire

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag

    Composer, historian, journalist, and Professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at UC Davis
    Militarization Of Campus Police
    Posted: 11/19/11 07:00 PM E
    Yesterday, police at UC Davis attacked seated students with a chemical gas.I teach at UC Davis and I personally know many of the students who were the victims of this brutal and unprovoked assault. They are top students. In fact, I can report that among the students I know, the higher a student’s grade point average, the more likely it is that they are centrally involved in the protests.This is not surprising, since what is at issue is the dismantling of public education in California. Just six years ago, tuition at the University of California was $5357. Tuition is currently $12,192. According to current proposals, it will be $22,068 by 2015-2016. We have discussed this in my classes, and about one third of my students report that their families would likely have to pull them out of school at the new tuition. It is not a happy moment when the students look around the room and see who it is that will disappear from campus. These are young people who, like college students everywhere and at all times, form some of the deepest friendships they will have in their lives.

  • Haystack

    …for them to live in when they retire. Can’t have them sleeping in the park. 

  • Simiantongue

    An interesting book called “Thought reform and The Psychology of Totalism” was a study of brainwashing in China. It was pretty good and makes it’s case point fairly well. Though I thought it was working with a very minor subset of people in Chinese culture where there has been some success at inculcation, mostly those who have much to gain from such a system. To be honest I think most people in China realize that most of what they hear is bullshit and take it as such, it’s kind of a given.  Not so in the US though, the idea here is that were “free” and with that illusion is the suggestion that we are free of coercion or inculcation simply because many here internalize the propaganda. This happens at many levels of society in the US. I think if they wished to study brainwashing the US was the place to do that.

    Take Joseph there for instance. Prime example of a thought terminating cliche’. Actually, I looked up the book and they have something about thought terminating chiche’ right on the wikipedia page.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism

    It’s apparent that people like Joseph are simply inculcated totalists. Now I’m not only speaking of Joseph here we’ve all had the pleasure, or displeasure rather, of coming across someone like him. It makes you wonder, well ok it makes me wonder, exactly what could be running through their minds. The answer is very little apparently. Or as little as they can get away with and still function at a basic level of functionality when faced with information such as this video. If people like Joseph think in terms of thought terminating chliches then they don’t really have to think too deeply about the subject of police tazering or pepper spraying. Clearly denying it’s the wrong thing to do, blaming the victim or justifying these actions in some rote manner and dismissing it out of hand. But I wonder what exactly their cognitive dissonance is that they need to act out commenting so clamorously? Unfortunately people of that sort say little so it’s hard to hash out what it is exactly. But we can know something of what’s going on in their mind because of that type of response.

  • Simiantongue

    It’s not the eyes that are the problem. You’re suffering psychologically sympathetic symptoms. I prescribe two nights of FOX news, your brain will be numbed enough to take an ice pick to the eye with little discomfort after that. Many people take advantage of this anesthesia, it’s quite popular. I warn you that this can be quite addictive as it tends to relieve the mind completely of any burdensome or troubling thoughts. So use it responsibly. If symptoms persist then seek medical advice. They’ll jack you up on some pharmacological wonder. You won’t be you any more but you’ll be someone anyway. Someone who isn’t suffering pangs of sympathetic symptoms.

  • Andrew

    I believe it’s the unacceptable knowledge that he himself would be brutalized if he exercised his “freedom” too much.

  • http://twitter.com/ThatNipplecat Theremin Nipplecat

    AAHAHAHAHAHAHA this is the best thing I have ever seen. I suggest you move the next time you’re asked to by fat policemen with giant cans of pepper spray.

  • Andrew

    Really?  The photos from Abu Ghraib didn’t give you a bigger erection?

  • E.B. Wolf

    I don’t think cops can be charged with crimes for anything they do “in the line of duty.”

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    liking your comment seems odd, but it is a great comeback…

    ninja approved?

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    thanks for the book suggestion, i will check it out!

    ‘totalism’ and ‘totalist’ -  am liking it already.

  • Anonymous

    Oakland already did. They laid off a ton of officers last year. One reason they’re using even harsher measures against people (and in Oakland, that’s saying something) because they can’t bring in ten cops to put down one person anymore.

  • Anonymous

    The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (California) ruled in 2002 HEADWATERS FOREST DEFENSE v. COUNTY OF HUMBOLDT that police were not entitled to qualified immunity in the use of pepper spray against peaceful protestors who were sitting peacefully and did not threaten or harm officers.

  • fruits

    you are right with this kind of conduct by the police there will be plenty of job manufacturing pepper spray.  simple supply and demand huh? joseph you troll asshole.

  • fruits

    yeah because doing what violent people say is the right way to live…

  • Anonymous

    Honestly, my first thought was a safe place to give the goons injections….

  • Anonymous

    Shame indeed….amazing display of “cops gone wild” and a whole mess of Gandhi’s taking it on the chin.
    Real, real bad PR for cops…no one seems to heed the historical pattern of martyrdom. It always leads to bad news for the aggressor in the end… 

    “Instant Karma’s gonna get you”

    We are all the Buddha…

  • Simiantongue

    That could very well be, certainly sounds plausible.

  • Infowar

    There’s nothing quite like sitting on private property, being asked to disperse, and then claiming ownership of rights to said property, and acting like a victim in front of millions when pepper sprayed. 

  • Infowar

    There’s nothing quite like sitting on private property, being asked to disperse, and then claiming ownership of rights to said property, and acting like a victim in front of millions when pepper sprayed. 

  • Infowar

    There’s nothing quite like sitting on private property, being asked to disperse, and then claiming ownership of rights to said property, and acting like a victim in front of millions when pepper sprayed. 

  • Mysophobe

    It’s relatively easy to act like a victim when you are one. Please explain how the pepperspray had anything to do with keeping the peace. Would you prefer that other misdemeanors like jaywalking be met with felony assault? Be careful, the right you would take away from others may be your own. It’s the sheep who cheer on this treatment that are the problem, not these lions who resolved themselves to peaceful resistance, come what may.

  • Gregg

    It’s not easy to witness the oppression from a fascist dictatorship, is it? 

  • Jarel

    UC Davis is a publicly funded school and the land that it is built on was a land grant, so it’s not private property

  • Jin Onikoroshi

    fail. UC davis is a public insititution.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rabahad Adam Rabah

    MADE ME SOOO MAD!