UC Davis Pepper Spray Report Faults Police, Administration

By on April 18, 2012 in News 18

2011-11-22-10-55-05-11-this-is-lt-john-pike-who-pepper-sprayed-studentsThe Infamous Brad on the damning report just released by UC Davis regarding the infamous police brutality (involving illegal, military-grade pepper spray) against students engaging in (entirely legal) protests this past year:

You know how every time somebody in law enforcement does something that looks bad, we’re told that we should “wait until the facts are in” before passing judgment? Well, after Lieutenant Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became an internet meme by using high-pressure pepper-spray on peaceful resisters, the campus hired an independent consulting firm to interview everybody they could find, review all the videos and other evidence, review the relevant policies and laws, and issue a final fact-finding report to the university. The university just released that report, along with their summary, and the final report is even worse than the news accounts made it seem.

You probably weren’t aware that the protesters warned the university that they were going to be protesting two weeks in advance, were you? The campus, and campus police, had two weeks’ notice to plan for this. But before it even came to that point, 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.

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. Oh, funny thing about that particular model of pepper-sprayer? It’s illegal for California cops to possess or use.

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  • Auto5734955

    Salutations from Central America;
    Isn’t the USA wonderful?  Felons with badges(….Assault with a deadly weapon is a felony in California still isn’t it).  Citizens prosecuted while complying with the “law” and felons being protected by that same “law” for committing those felonies. Oh well, America love it or leave it, that’s why I’m here in L.A.. ‘Cause I trust Uncle Sam, to do right and dispense Justice….really I do …..implicitly.

  • I Ron Butterfly

    >You probably weren’t aware that the protesters warned the university that they were going to be protesting two weeks in advance, were you?

    So what?

    The protesters were a bunch of spoiled brats who were willing to make life difficult for the 99% they claim to cherish. The fact that they gave 2 weeks notice for their tantrum does not make them paragons of virtue.

    • supersoul

      Just stop.

    • Jennifer

       how did they make life difficult for the 99%?  are you really that ignorant about the right to protest, and how even if its not pretty, it still needs to happen to keep our country strong?  Is there anything you believe in, or just a fan of making nasty comments when the decline of our political system and how uninvolved and disenfranchised people are is a serious issue – we are seeing it bought up by corporations.

      supersoul has it right.  just stop.  or better yet, shoot your balls off so you can’t breed anymore nasty stoopid apathy into this world. 

  • Redacted

    No kidding? You mean to tell me that Officer Chubzo up there was in the wrong?

  • http://www.jaycob.co.nf/ Scruffy

    At the little pot protests I’ve been to (just as something to do), cops brought cameras. On another occasion when there were 1000s of us, we were told to hug any police trying to arrest anyone for pot.

    *Edit* Oh yeah it was Marc Emery that told us to hug ‘em, forgot XD

  • Nunzio X

    As a small boy, I remember seeing Norman Rockwell’s “THE RUNAWAY.”

    It shows a cop at a diner, sitting next to a small boy who had perhaps impulsively run away from home. Maybe the cop is suggesting the boy return home, maybe he’s asking him about the adventures he hopes to have on the road, maybe he’s treating the boy to a soda before calling the worried mom.

    The one thing you don’t get from the painting is: “This cop is about to fuck the kid up.”

    When I was about 4, my mother told me: “If you ever get lost, find a policeman. The policeman is your friend.”

    I think it would have broken my late mother’s heart to see the video of that cop pepper spraying  those peaceful protesters.

  • DeepCough

    Protestors should bring their own shields for this very occasion. No law saying you have to be pepper-sprayed.

    • Auto5734955

      They’d call it a weapon and shoot you.

      • DeepCough

        Only if you’re stupid enough to put a target on it.

      • http://twitter.com/mattstaggs Matt Staggs

        Seems like I recall reading somewhere that they classify shields of any sort as weapons, and in some areas you can’t wear gas masks or other things to obscure your face. Someone might be able to dig up something about this somewhere.

  • Underlovesrule

    Outrage seems to be the only weapon left in the battle against police brutality for the rational non-martyrs among us.  The choices are grim, 1) we protest and become victims ourselves, 2) we defend ourselves and are harmed much worse for “resisting arrest”, or 3) we wait and wait upon an ineffectual lunatic system to correct the injustices (in a response to public outrage). 

    • rtb61

       Now you get a real inkling of the price paid by previous people and the turn of the last century. Yes, unionist were shot at by the national guard and on many other occasions protesters were shot at and basically publicly executed without trial for upholding their beliefs.
      That’s what it took innocent courageous people to be shot and killed in their tens and hundreds again and again to win the freedoms you enjoy.
      The killers will kill to try to keep their power basically a licence to kill and people will willingly die at a set time and place basically sacrifice their life to avoid them and theirs dying at random.

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    China is so repressive; they never tolerate protest and
    they always use physical violence against protesters, damned totalitarian commies…
    Oh wait a minute, this happen in the USA…
    Oh then never mind; they musta been asking for trouble.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rick-Moss/100002226201348 Rick Moss

    This is silly. We are fighting like this is the sixties when things where much simpler and the problems where much smaller compared to today. And what happened? They sold out! They couldn’t win then and we can’t win now with these old childish tactics that don’t work. And this time things are so bad there will be nothing left to sell out to.  Wake up people. We need a real revolution that has to take place in your head first.

    Read “Common Sense 3.1” at (Http://www.revolution2.osixs.org)
    FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM

    We don’t have to live like this.

    • PoeticJustice

      every up and coming generation thinks they’re problems are so awful and they’re causes are so righteous. This is the same thing that has been going on in one form or another for thousands of years. We all want what we can’t have, it’s just that simple. If tomorrow everyone woke up with the same amount of money in our bank accounts, no territorial lines, and everyone’s skin color seemed to match we would still find something to complain and protest about.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    While that sounds bad, nothing substantive will really happen.  No one will get fired, and I really doubt the university’s insurers will even consider it when adjusting their liability premiums.

  • Bungle

    The “police” are allowed to make mistakes but civilians are not. Logic has escaped us a long time ago.