“Barring a last-minute legal glitch, University of California officials expect to release the report on the pepper-spraying of UC Davis students on Wednesday,” the Sacramento Bee is reporting.
“Attorneys for the university regents and campus police are seeking approval of a settlement at a court hearing in Oakland today that will pave the way for the report to be issued without naming most of the officers who were interviewed.
“The report, which has had its release delayed more than a month because of legal skirmishing, is expected to delve deeply into the actions of university administrators and police that led to the Nov. 18 incident.
“The documents, scheduled to be placed online at noon at http://www.ucdavis.edu and unveiled at a public meeting on the campus at 3:30 p.m. in Freeborn Hall, actually comprise two reports.”
Read more from the Bee here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/10/4402078/uc-davis-pepper-spray-report-on.html#storylink=cpy
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The UC Davis incident could be used as the prime example of excessive force.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/e/excessive-force/
Excessive force by a law enforcement officers is a violation of a person’s rights. Excessive force is not subject to a precise definition, but it is generally beyond the force a reasonable and prudent law enforcement officer would use under the circumstances.
Force should be used in only the minimum amount needed to achieve a legitimate purpose. Police brutality is a direct violation of the laws within the police force. The use of excessive force is also a direct violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S Constitution regarding cruelty and protection of the laws.
Ben,
I think you will have many arguments on this being “excessive force” considering the alternative was to “physically” remove them which could have easily resulted in physical harm on both the demonstrators and police force. That being said, lets wait for the report to come out on Wednesday and discuss this further.
Pete
Pete,
What threat were the sitting protesters to anyone. If any law was being violated it was a misdemeanor. Making an equivalence then pepper spraying someone for j-walking is a reasonable action in 2012 America. These were protesters using their first amendment rights of peaceably assembling and redressing their grievances on the property of a public university.
California Penal Code Section 409
Every person remaining present at the place of any riot, rout,
or unlawful assembly, after the same has been lawfully warned to
disperse, except public officers and persons assisting them in
attempting to disperse the same, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDMQbNWyMlcAmendment I
US Constitution First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
And excessive force against selective groups–despite the Constitution–is as American as mom,baseball and apple pie.
However the powers that be rule on the pepper spraying incident, IMO, and others, the most chilling aspect of rhe incident was the contemptuous nonchalance with which the act was preformed. It has been many years since I read studies on the psychology of the law enforcer mental profile, but what lingers is the enjoyment of the action, adrenelin rush, confrontation, especially true with many when it comes to those ‘snotty, think-they’re-better-than-everyone-else college kids.’ Mr Tony Waters surley has a clearer grasp of this research, but my contention relates to a post I made weeks ago on my belief that here in the USA we would have had plenty of personality types that would have transitioned w/o a bump into the culture of the Stormtroopers or the NKVD.
I have personally witnessed cops beating the sh++ out of completely subdued people; have been attacked by roving bands of police while walking with friends; listened to cops tell their stories of beating up the nig+++s at the Oakland jail; and from my own home town, some of the biggest, badest, badasses became police officers. And what everyone should be aware of is that cops lie. Code of silence. Anyone that has had encounters with police generally will discover this. I have. Not all the time, but at the necessary times. I have too many indisputablly proven incidents of this for my mind to be changed and every week stories of police corruption somewhere pop-up. And not just in the NYC area where I was raised.
I know how outraged I was while at Chico St. working on my History Masters in the early ’90s when riots of sorts broke out, maybe by students initially, but latter by police and their redneck civilian re-inforcements. Fact is, lots of people just plain enjoy the mob mentality of kicking the crap out of others. Don’t know if Tony Waters was at Chico then, but riots have probably occured again.
And as an off topic aside–I doubt Zimmerman had ever heard of the Stand Your Ground defence.
Ed,
As you put it the nonchalance of the act of spraying the protesters showed there was no physical threat to the police or the dozens of onlookers who were filming and taking pictures. What was being done was the refusal to follow illegitimate orders. The protesters where well within their rights and were not endangering anyone except themselves to excessive force by an overzealous authority.
Ben, pepper spraying aside, please explain “illegitimate orders”. It is my understanding that the protesters were asked to remove their tents(at numerous requests and warnings) due to the derogation of the campus where the tents were set up.(it is not a constitutional right to camp anywhere one pleases is it?) The protesters were NOT asked to stop protesting, in fact UC Davis is pretty lenient when it comes to setting up booths ect. and accommodating numerous protests as long as it doesn’t destroy university property and it doesn’t block vehicle or pedestrian traffic So what was illegitimate about the order to take down the tents?
Pete,
The pepper spray is the excessive force and source of intimidation. Arresting, rounding up and holding, or giving people citations for protesting during republican convention wasn’t lawful but a form of intimidation and reducing the push back from the people in the streets. The police or authorities know there is little chance these will go to court and if they do will have little chance being convictions. The object is to intimidate protesters to stay home and stay quiet.
This video is about 2004 and it was just as bad or even worse in St Paul, MN 2008. This isn’t an exclusively republican thing but in recent years it has been worse with the republican party.
As for the tents if you look to Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization 1939. Regulating our First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment Rights are not legal, this case specifically addresses parks and streets (public property).
For a final note on this comment this is the very reason why we cannot privatize the commons. If we privatize our streets, our government programs, our parks, our water ways, our airwaves, our open spaces, our commons away we will no longer have a Constitution that protects us from abuses since the US Constitution secures us from an overreaching government not an over reaching corporate sector. If there are no more public places to exercise our rights those rights become obsolete.
Pete, PTI (Pardon the Interruption–if you don’t watch ESPN), I know Ben will speak for himself when able. My only comment is that an illegitimate order can be one made by someone not authorized do make such an order. Perhaps thats not true here, and the truth may never fully be known. Who knows what those officers told their superiors after the event. And how did the Police know who owned what tents and was the officer doing the pepper spraying sure that he was spraying the correct owner of the unremoved tents? Now, if the issue was blocking access, then we’re back to right to peacable assembly, I would think.
Guess Kent State sticks in my mind and the aftermath when I joined tens of thousands in D.C., mostly peaceful, but some outbreaks.
Definitely hard to get to an unbiased truth at times, IMO.
Except, Broccoli and Corporations aren’t People. Only in courts such as those headed by the likes of Ronald Freisler and Andrei Vyshinsky are verdicts of truth unassailable. Scalia should read up on their decisions and regain his lost balance. .
Ben & Ed, I guess I am not conveying my point.( I may be digging myself into an unintended hole) Yes, I believe in the Constitutional right to Protest. I wasn’t at the protest so I don’t know the decision making process that went into using the pepper-spray. That assumingly will be in the report. On the face, it seems there could have been a better way to defuse the situation but again I wasn’t involved in the decision making process. I think both sides could have made some better choices in their actions. Lets continue this dialogue when the report comes out.
Pete,
I don’t you if you have ever been an active protester, more than carrying a sign a couple times a year. The right to protest a.k.a redress our grievances with our government on public property is an inalienable right. No local ordinance that regulates or violates that right would be legitimate, therefore pepper spraying protesters that are sitting down across a pathway of a grassy portion of campus were acting lawfully. Here is the distinction between the morality of the two sides establishment vs. protester. Establishment arrests, intimidates, pepper sprays, corrals, and basically violate Constitutional rights to silence those to which they disagree. Here is how the protesters handled the actions of the establishment to which they disagreed. The silent walk of shame. I choose the latter every time as being the more moral and just.
Ben,
I agree. The latter was a more impactful form of protest.(IMHO anyway)
F. Lt. Pike Bears Primary Responsibility for the Objectively Unreasonable Decision to Use Pepper Spray on the Students Sitting in a Line and for the Manner in Which the Pepper Spray Was Used
“We agree with Kroll’s conclusion that Lieutenant Pike’s use of force in pepper spraying seated protesters was objectively unreasonable.”
I strongly agree.
Yep!! A cop that needs to pay his dues in Harlem, NYC,–or Santa Ana, then maybe he won’t be so quick to act the bully. Probably the same mental set as so many blowhard Texans I knew that always had there guns nearby.
The University/ authorities were virtually at complete fault.