UC Davis Pepper Spray Madness

Police use of pepper spray on a dozen protesters at University of California, Davis, on Friday sparked requires the resignation of the university’s chancellor and the start of an investigation into the incident.

Eyewitnesses uploaded their recordings past due Friday. In a observation on Saturday that stated the position of the eyewitnesses in elevating consciousness in regards to the police’s behavior, the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, mentioned she was saddened by means of “the events.”

“The use of pepper spray as proven at the video is chilling to us all and increases many questions about how perfect to maintain eventualities like this,” Ms. Katehi wrote. Her observation stated that she was forming a task pressure and asking university officials to check existing policies about encampments like the one who used to be erected at the campus this week.

“While the school is trying to verify the safety and well being of all participants of our community, we will have to make sure that our strategies to achieve compliance are honest and cheap and do not result in mistreatment,” Ms. Katehi wrote.

Asked about the calls for by means of some college participants for her resignation, Ms. Katehi said at a information conference on Saturday afternoon that she didn't deem it appropriate to surrender “at this point.”

This week also noticed 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 motion in New York City. Pepper spray was once used, too, in Seattle on Tuesday night.

More than a dozen movies of the Davis incident were uploaded to YouTube. The most-watched video has been considered greater than 200,000 times, in step with the Web site. The movies have generated outcry online and were rebroadcast on television on Saturday. A connection with the pepper spray use used to be the No. 1 trending subject on Google in the United States on Saturday afternoon.

In probably the most videos, the officer steps over a line of seated protesters, holds the pepper spray bottle within the air, then sprays it in the protesters’ faces in a coordinated type as eyewitnesses gasp and shout, “Shame on you.” Most of the protesters stay seated; police officers then forcibly dispose of and arrest them.

In a video taken from any other direction, two officials may also be seen dousing protesters with pepper spray at the related time. Though not visual within the videos, the operator of the Facebook page for the Occupy U.C. Davis group 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 introduced that protesters can be running with legal professionals to pursue felony action.

In the video, after the arrests, protesters and bystanders are observed asking the police to leave. “You can go,” they chant. The police then seem 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, informed The Sacramento Bee that the officials used pepper spray on Friday for the reason that police were surrounded by means of students. “There was no manner out of that circle,” she advised the newspaper. “They were chopping the officers off from their support. It’s an excessively volatile situation.”

The videos, however, show officers freely shifting approximately and show students behaving peacefully. The college said no cases of violence by means of any protesters.

The indexed phone quantity for Ms. Spicuzza indicated on Saturday that her voice mailbox was once full.

The pepper spray incident took place at the end of per week of non violent demonstrations at the U.C. Davis campus. According to Ms. Katehi’s statement, a gaggle of protesters arrange approximately 25 tents on the campus quad on Thursday in violation of university policy. Such encampments had been part of the strategy of Occupy-aligned protesters in cities and towns across the country.

The campers had been told on Thursday and Friday that they'd to remove the tents. Ms. Spicuzza mentioned she determined “not to allow encampments at the quad right through the weekend, whilst the overall campus amenities are locked and the college body of workers isn't broadly to be had to provide support.”

Some of the protesters removed their tents, however others did not. When the police took the tents down, one of the most ultimate protesters locked fingers and refused to move, resulting in the pepper spray use.

Some protesters had been hospitalized afterward, in step with local reports. Ten were arrested. Interviewed at a health center through a neighborhood newspaper, The Davis Enterprise, one of the crucial protesters, Dominic Gutierrez, said that he have been sprayed whilst looking to protect others. “When you give protection to the things you imagine in with your body, it changes you for good. It radicalizes you for good,” he said.

In the wake of what it referred to as police violence, an affiliation that represents some Davis college participants referred to as for Ms. Katehi’s resignation on Saturday. In a letter that used to be printed online, Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the English department and a member of the association’s board, stated that Ms. Katehi used to be chargeable for the violence and will have to renounce immediately.

“The reality is: the administration of U.C. campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize scholars and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress unfastened speech and peaceful assembly. Many people understand this,” Mr. Brown wrote. “Many extra persons are learning it very quickly.”

Videos of the Davis incident uploaded to YouTube display law enforcement officials dousing the protesters — mostly students, in keeping with local reports — with orange pepper spray, after again and again asking them to disperse from the primary quad on campus. The protesters had been seated with their hands linked on a sidewalk.

A 2nd video, published by way of a user named asucd, confirmed the perspective from at the back of the chain of protesters.