Shame on American police

When multiple videos clearly show that seated students made no effort to impede the police officers’ movement you can wonder why batons and pepper-spray were taken out to use against the students. The protest at which University of California Davis police officers used pepper spray and batons against unresisting demonstrators was an entirely non violent one.

In this image made from video, a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of Occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of California, Davis on Friday, Nov. 18. The YouTube video was shot as police moved in on more than a dozen tents erected on campus and arrested 10 people, nine of them students. Thomas K. Fowler/AP

In one of the videos, the officer steps over a line of seated protesters, holds the pepper spray bottle in the air, then sprays it in the protesters’ faces in a coordinated fashion as eyewitnesses gasp and shout, “Shame on you.” Most of the protesters remain seated; police officers then forcibly remove and arrest them.
Though most of the police officers looked calmly at the site just a few took the wrong action pulling, tearing and beating on the students who did not want to stand up from the ground (and move their asses.)

A video posted by the user terrydatiger showed the incident from the side.

“The use of pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” the saddened university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, said.

Last week also saw arrests of protesters in more than a dozen states and the eviction of protesters from the birthplace of the two-month-old Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City. Pepper spray was used, too, in Seattle on Tuesday night.

Lt. Pike, who initiated the pepper spraying of the UC Davis group, was inside the circle moments earlier. To position himself to spray, he simply stepped over the line.
Though University of California Police are not authorized to use pepper spray except in circumstances in which it is necessary to prevent physical injury to themselves or others they used it while it is clearly shown they were never brought in danger.

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From the University of California’s Universitywide Police Policies and Administrative Procedures: “Chemical agents are weapons used to minimize the potential for injury to officers, offenders, or other persons. They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.”

In the wake of what it called police violence, an association that represents some Davis faculty members called for Ms. Katehi’s resignation on Saturday. In a letter that was published online, Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the English department and a member of the association’s board, said that Ms. Katehi was responsible for the violence and should resign immediately.

A police officer pepper-sprays students at an Occupy protest at University of California, Davis. Photograph: Jasna Hodzic/The Aggie

“The fact is: the administration of U.C. campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this,” Mr. Brown wrote. “Many more people are learning it very quickly.”

All this police brutality helps destabilize the institutions were they think to be helping. They just get the opposite reaction and are also weakening the position of those in charge, like majors and deans. Also they are sending the wrong message into the world.

It is good to hear that two officers had been put on administrative leave, but ‘mal’ has been done. The recent police actions do create blood. Instead of calming down the situation they stir up and give a lot of people more reason to go into protest, what we are clearly seeing that happens. Because they were not hard press and did not fall foul of, they made more a fool out of themselves and bring up questions about the apparatus.

Often it were the ‘peace keeping’ forces who did not keep on their shirt and disrupted peaceful movements. Does this means something is lacking in the training of those troops?
Both officers were trained in the use of pepper spray as department policy dictates, and both had been sprayed with it themselves during training the school’s Police Chief Annette Spicuzza told The Associated Press.
“The identities of the two officers were not revealed, but the campus police chief told the Associated Press news agency that one was a veteran of the school’s police force, while the other was “fairly” new to the department.

There will be a rally at UC Davis today Monday November 21st at noon.

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Read more and watch the video’s:

• U.C. Davis Calls for Investigation After Pepper Spraying
• Ten Things You Should Know About Friday’s UC Davis Police Violence

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