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The UC Davis Pepper Spray incident: police brutality or lawful escalation of force? [UPDATED: Police were surrounded and held hostage, they warned each protester before spraying]
***scroll down for updates***
Is this police brutality? Or lawful escalation of force?
Much hay has been made on the Internet over this past weekend following the now-infamous pepper-spray incident between Occupy protesters and police on the UC Davis campus.
The reactions to it — cries of police brutality and pledges to reconvene protesters on a larger scale — seemed to mirror the reactions in New York, Seattle and elsewhere when the police quelled recent protests with force.
As police officers moved to take down the tents at Davis on Friday afternoon, some protesters on a sidewalk on the campus quad linked arms and refused to stand.
In one of the many YouTube videos of the episode, bystanders chant, “Don’t shoot students” before an officer shakes a pepper spray canister and walks before a line of seated protesters, spraying them. The protesters’ faces and clothes are quickly covered in the orange-tinted spray.
Some protesters are heard screaming and crying as they are arrested. One bystander is heard shouting: “These are children! These are children!”
Eleven protesters were treated at the scene after being sprayed, and two of them were then sent to the hospital. Ten protesters were arrested on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse and were later released, according to the university.
It didn’t take long for the gratuitous (and sometimes humorous) Photoshops mocking what was seen by some to be police brutality.
C'mon, really?
But did the police engage in police brutality by pepper-spraying these “peaceful” protesters? Rather than watching the popular video which starts when the pepper spraying begins, let’s take a look at the longer video which shows the events leading up to that point.
A large group of protesters had gathered on the quad and formed a ring around police officers.
- 0:58 — An officer walks up to the line of students who are blocking the sidewalk with their arms linked and asks one of them to move. The student refuses. And they they all laugh at the officer and then continue chanting, “Our university!” and “Power of the students!”
- Several officers can be seen conversing on their radios (presumably communicating with headquarters or a commanding officer).
- 4:00 — The officer informs the protesters that if they do not move, they will be shot with pepper spray. Again, the students refuse to move and instead chant, “Don’t shoot students!”
- 5:00 — Officers can be seen retrieving pepper spray canisters from their belts and shaking them up. Still no movement from the ring of students surrounding the officers.
- 5:30 — Standing students begin to scream to their seated fellows to “Protect your eyes!” But nobody moves. In fact, several standing students hand cloths to the seated resisters so that they can cover their faces. Everyone here knows what is about to happen, and they’re bracing for it. But not moving.
- 6:20 — Officers on the outside of the ring of students tell them to move out of the way and off the sidewalk. The seated students still won’t budge.
- 6:36 — One officer from inside the ring steps over the line of students, turns and begins to spray the seated students with pepper spray.
- 7:00 — The seated students begin to feel the effects of the pepper spray and unlink their arms. At that point, officers move in and begin to arrest them.
A cursory search for “legal escalation of force” brings up an article from policechiefmagazine.org entitled, “Force Continuums: Three Questions.”
The actual law on the degree of allowable force is quite broad and very much in favor of officers. Legal standards…take numerous factors into account that continuums do not. For example, many continuums depict only the relationship between the subject’s current behavior (“actively resisting,” for example) and the officer’s force response.
…The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in, too. Its Civil Rights Division urges agencies adopt a progressive force continuum and train all officers in it. Consent decrees and technical letters of assistance sometimes require agencies to do so. According to the Department of Justice, a force continuum should include all types of force used by an agency, including firearms, pepper spray, batons, and canines.
The students who refused a legal order from law enforcement to unblock the sidewalk were actively resisting a lawful order to disperse. The University of California’s Universitywide Police Policies and Administrative Procedures has this to say about the use of pepper spray:
“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.”
If students are actively resisting a lawful order from law enforcement, what is the officer to do? If a student chooses to take a peaceful and lawful protest and escalate it by refusing a lawful order, the protest may indeed be peaceful but it has ceased to be lawful. According to the UC Davis’ Student Responsibilities and Conduct Standards:
102.16 Failure to Comply with Directions of Official, or Resisting or Obstructing Official. Failure to identify oneself to, or comply with the directions of, a University official or other public official acting in the performance of his/her duties while on University property or at official University functions; or resisting or obstructing such officials in the performance of or the attempt to perform their duties.
Whether the officers were acting in a “reasonable” manner is a matter that will now likely be decided in court. According to the University’s policies, it appears that the police were acting within their guidelines while the students were violating theirs (it also appears that by refusing to unblock the sidewalk, the students may have been in violation of 102.13 Obstruction or Disruption and 102.15 Disturbing the Peace).
Sorry, no sympathy here.
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UPDATE: The use of pepper spray in incidents like this is “fairly standard police procedure.”
Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
“When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,” Kelly said. “Bodies don’t have handles on them.”
After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of “active resistance” from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.
“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said.
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UPDATE:
As shown in the video below, each protester who was blocking the sidewalk (and surrounding the police) was individually warned that if they didn’t move they would be subject to the use of force. They chose to keep their arms linked in order to actively resist the police.
Not surprisingly, this is not being shown by the same media which has been wringing its collective hands for the fleabaggers who were pepper-sprayed. I hope this video will help exonerate not only the officers involved in this incident, but the Chancellor of U.C. Davis who is being called upon to resign. (h/t: Verum Serum)
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UPDATE: I’m updating this post again because I’ve had a couple recent discussions with some folks on Google+ who still seem to hold on to the farcical notion that the UC Davis protesters hadn’t surrounded the police — they were just sitting “peacefully.” Not only does the video above prove that wrong, but so does the testimony of Elli Pearson; one of the students who was pepper-sprayed. (via: Liberty Chick)
“We linked arms and we sat down peacefully to protest their [riot police] presence on our campus, and then at one point we had encircled them [police] and they were trying to leave and trying to clear a path, and so we sat down and linked arms, and said that if they were trying to clear a path they would have to go through us.” [emphasis added — FMP]
Here’s yet another video. This one is crystal clear that the students were in the wrong. The Occupy protesters surrounded UC police and held them hostage in an attempt to intimidate officers into releasing students that had been arrested. The protesters gave the cops an ultimatum: “If you let them go, we will let you leave.” (h/t: P/O’ed Patriot)
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Cross-posted at Left Coast Rebel
Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
The Cops were right, the hippies were wrong, the law defends the use and the timeline shows restraint. No sympathy here either.
This escalated for a huge amount of time. Media completely blew this out of proportions. These officers should get medals for putting up with a chanting group of people completely surrounding them. That’s enough right there to use force. They completely surrounded the officers which is a threat to them as human beings.
[...] post is a follow-up on my Nov 21 post about the UC Davis pepper spray incident because I think it’s important to counter the [...]