UC Davis Pepper Spray

UC Davis Pepper Spray
Law enforcement use of spice up apply on a number of demonstrators at School of Florida, Davis, on Exclusive started needs the resignation of the university’s chancellor and the begin of an exploration into the occurrence.

Eyewitnesses transferred their files later Exclusive. In a report on Wednesday that accepted the position of the eyewitnesses in increasing attention about the police’s habits, the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, said she was saddened by “the situations.”

“The use of spice up apply as found on the training video is relaxing to us all and increases many concerns about how best to deal with scenarios like this,” Ms. Katehi authored. Her report said that she was growing a endeavor power and asking university authorities to assessment established guidelines about encampments like the one that was constructed on the college this A week.

“While the university is trying to ensure the safety and health of all members of our community, we must ensure our strategies to gain compliance are fair and reasonable and do not lead to mistreatment,” Ms. Katehi wrote.

Asked about the demands by some faculty members for her resignation, Ms. Katehi said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon that she did not deem it appropriate to resign “at this point.”

This 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.

More than a dozen videos of the Davis incident have been uploaded to YouTube. The most-watched video has been viewed more than 200,000 times, according to the Web site. The videos have generated outcry online and were rebroadcast on television on Saturday. A reference to the pepper spray use was the No. 1 trending topic on Google in the United States on Saturday afternoon.

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.

In a video taken from another direction, two officers can be seen dousing protesters with pepper spray at the same time. Though not visible in the videos, the operator of the Facebook page for the Occupy U.C. Davis organization claimed that one police officer “shoved a pepper spray gun down a student’s throat and pulled the trigger.” On Saturday afternoon, the Facebook page announced that protesters would be working with attorneys to pursue legal action.

In the video, after the arrests, protesters and bystanders are seen asking the police to leave. “You can go,” they chant. The police then appear to walk away from the quad, to applause from protesters.

A spokesperson for the U.C. Davis police did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. Annette Spicuzza, the U.C. Davis police chief, told The Sacramento Bee that the officers used pepper spray on Friday because the police were surrounded by students. “There was no way out of that circle,” she told the newspaper. “They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.”

The videos, however, show officers freely moving about and show students behaving peacefully. The university reported no instances of violence by any protesters.

The listed phone number for Ms. Spicuzza indicated on Saturday that her voice mailbox was full.

The pepper spray incident took place at the end of a week of peaceful demonstrations on the U.C. Davis campus. According to Ms. Katehi’s statement, a group of protesters set up about 25 tents on the campus quad on Thursday in violation of university policy. Such encampments have been part of the strategy of Occupy-aligned protesters in cities and towns across the country.

The campers were told on Thursday and Friday that they had to remove the tents. Ms. Spicuzza said she decided “not to allow encampments on the quad during the weekend, when the general campus facilities are locked and the university staff is not widely available to provide support.”

Some of the protesters removed their tents, but others did not. When the police took the tents down, some of the remaining protesters locked arms and refused to move, leading to the pepper spray use.

Some protesters were hospitalized afterward, according to local reports. Ten were arrested. Interviewed at a hospital by a local newspaper, The Davis Enterprise, one of the protesters, Dominic Gutierrez, said that he had been sprayed while trying to shield others. “When you protect the things you believe in with your body, it changes you for good. It radicalizes you for good,” he said.

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.

“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.”