Hat tip NYT, which reports calls for the resignation of the university’s chancellor (NB: Harvard President Drew Faust, who has Occupy protesters of her own).
Note that although the police do drag off the non-violent protesters they have fumigated, at the end of the video they are ignominiously forced to retreat to chants of “You can go!” and “Goodbye” i.e. they win the battle but lose the war, as it were. That is a portentous message.
Whatever one’s opinions of the protesters’ cause the idea that people peacefully sitting on the ground should be pepper sprayed like this is outrageous. If the police wanted to arrest them, they could easily have done that without the chemical weapons. This the kind of gratuitous brutality that, repeated over time, has prompted enormous reactions in our past.
http://youtu.be/WmEHcOc0Sys
Remember when leaders of both political parties roundly criticized Arab governments for deploying things such as chemical weapons against peaceful protesters and that our leaders made a promise to stand with those on the side of Democracy against violent suppression of free speech?
Yeah, those were good times.
just walks up and down the line like he’s spray painting a fence! I cannot BELIEVE this quote from the police chief:
I’m with the NYTimes post, the video CLEARLY shows complete peacefulness on the part of the protesters. Sure, we don’t see the moments before the incident, but the officer in question hardly looks like he’s in a strained position striding up and down the line of students like that.
Asshats.
These tactics of police exaggerating and falsifying the threat of protesters reminds me of two things: one is the old police lie that a defenseless suspect was “shot while trying to escape”, the other is that episode from the first season of South Park where uncle Jimbo takes the kids hunting and explains that in order to skirt local hunting laws, you have to shout “They’re coming right for us” before blasting any animals
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149674/its-coming-right-for-us
This goes back to, officers thinking that their so-called non-violent means of control (pepper spray, rubber bullets, etc) can be used with impunity since no one is (USUALLY) permanently hurt (of course, tell that poor girl at the Red Sox (?) rally that – oh wait, they can’t).
Not only do we need to stand up for the 99% and all that that entails, but we need a SERIOUS discussion about security vs liberty and the brutality that is using these so-called less violent crowd control devices of theirs. Because if they keep sending people to the hospital in critical condition, they’re gonna get their toys taken away from them.
The UC Davis tuition is currently $9,400. The UC Board of Regents plans to raise tuition 81% to $17,000. That’s huge, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable for students to protest that in the peaceful manner they were using. The UC Regents should not jack up tuition at a time when so many families are struggling.
Even after the terrible actions of Lt. Pike, students were respectful when they confront UCD Chancellor Katehi the next day.
in 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-G8rNDNmNg&feature=related
Hopefully I am the only booby deluded for a moment into wondering for a wild moment or two whether our President might be somebody lesser’s chancellor on the side. Like “James VII and II,” ¿don’t you know? [*]
But seriously, the New York Times Company employee did not make as clear as he might have that these are only Kampus Kops, not real municipal crimefighters.
That distinction once insisted on, there is a further one to be drawn between H*rv*rd-style Kampus Kops, an entirely secret-sector phenomenon, and UC-style Kampus Kops, who may not be the real McCop but are taxpayer-funded nevertheless.
Happy days.
___
[*] I just noticed, ¡hooray!, that _The King’s English_ is well out of copyright. Section 51 contains a vaguely similar passage:
(McTrickledown, by the way, did in fact read this article at about 0300 hours.)
Then the campus police are state police.
My understanding is that the UMass Police (Amherst campus) have about the same level of training and professionalism as the Town of Amherst Police, which whom they have a good working relationship. The State Police, at least in their own estimation, are on a higher level.
There are campuses where the campus police are more like private security forces, but UMass (and most large public universities) are not among them.
Our campus police have, as best I can tell, reacted fairly professionally to some serious apolitical rioting on campus. The Occupy events at UMass have been more or less non-confrontational.
That said, the Davis footage was uncomfortably reminiscent of Kent State, though both sides seem to have learned something since then.
The UMass police are well-trained, and I would add, underpaid. They may be state employees, but they aren’t paid at the same rates as state police. I mention the low pay because it causes good people to seek jobs elsewhere to move on.
UMass has had a history of riots from the racially tinged riot back when I was a mid-1980s undergrad to dangerously out-of-control parties like the Hobart Hoe Down. Between the UMass and Amherst police forces, things have quieted down quite a bit. Aside from the officers, both forces have had good police chiefs with Barbara O’Connor formerly at UMass and Charlie Scherpa at the Amherst PD, now Scott Livingstone. Amherst has a yearly Extravaganja on the Common and it goes off peacefully.
…Mahatma Ghandi is smiling slyly.
(This is good thing).
Video here of Chancellor Linda Katehi Addresses Students of UC Davis. Yes, Joel she could have addressed the students in person, when they came to speak to her, but this is more fun. Kind of like breaking up by text message.
“I do understand the last week has bee difficult for you…it has been difficult for all of us” “I am very pleased to find out that last night when we had an event here we were able to find a way to bring it to a resolution peacefully. And this is the way we need to proceed from this point on.” “We would like to start a dialogue. We would like you to understand where those resources come from and what kind of flexibility. And we hope that by you having access to this information, you will then work with us.” “I wish you a safe weekend and I hope you take with you the experiences of this past week and think about the ways that you and us can work together.”
This should contribute to some interesting conversation around the Thanksgiving table of the families that pay her salary.
How long before she resigns?
Petition
you would think police would be more cautious in how they deal with protesters. Like, how could this guy with the pepper spray be standing there, with literally hundreds of cameras, smartphones, and camcorders pointed right at him, and not think “Hmmm, maybe this won’t look so hot on TV tonight – maybe we should just go up behind and arrest them.”
The official police response always goes along the line of “Well, there was danger in the situation and this was done by the book.” Then people see the video and say “yeah, right.” Some police officers don’t seem like they’ve learned from this.
Reminds me of the Vietnam era when official government accounts of the actions/progress in the war ran completely counter to what was being shown on TV – officials hadn’t adapted to a new environment where people could see first-hand accounts of the situation, and call their account into question. Decades later, some police officers (and I do mean “some”, many police have dealt with protesters appropriately) seem like they still haven’t figured this out.
They are former police officers who have been converted into paramilitaries. Police officers have been flooded with combat training and weapons because 19 people took control of four aircraft 10 years ago. Materiel completely unrelated to their job. Unsurprisingly, people who’ve been trained as paramilitaries act as such.
One consequence of the Occupy Everything movement is the clarity with which it reveals the extent that corporate interests have bought and now own police departments.
These are not just paramilitaries, they are mercenaries, not very different from the paid thugs who brutalized workers during the early years of the US labor movement.
There’s a danger of being unfair to cops. This retired cop, arrested as an Occupy protester, explained what it’s like out there.
As law enforcement, cops are the nexus of establishment power. What they do is a reflection of our government and our elites. Like everyone else, some are asshats, some are okay. Like the rest of us, they are doing a job. Some believe in their orders, others probably don’t. All are doing their jobs. Most don’t have the luxury of quitting their jobs or not following orders. .
These same people who are trying to move protesters are also those who protect and serve. The UC-Davis cops, or at least a couple of them, acted like mercenaries, the majority acted like public employees caught between a government disconnected from the people it represents and the people who are pointing out the disconnect.
They’re in a bad position. I don’t expect too many of them to quit in protest as did law enforcement in Syria, Egypt, etc. I am not ready to call them mercenaries.
However, I’ve been concerned for a while about the amount of heavy weaponry thrown at police departments recently, and training in increasingly aggressive tactics that has gone along with it. Spend enough convincing a cop that a beatdown is a better path than reason, and s/he will believe it.
I call your attention to items like the 2010 contribution by JP Morgan of $4.6 M to the NYPD (emphasis mine):
I suggest that accepting LARGE contributions like this from private corporations has the practical effect of making mercenaries out of police officers who are ordered to “strengthen security” when private citizens exercise their first-amendment rights in ways that the corporate donor dislikes.
When we essentially privatize our police departments — by slashing taxes to the point where those police departments are dependent upon large private donations — then we effectively make mercenaries of our police.
JPMorgan Chase was an early target of Occupy Wallstreet. I encourage you watch, again, this video showing police violence from last October. Please pause the clip at 1:04, and note the “Chase” logo in the window in the top center of the video frame. The police in this clip are literally working in the shadow of offices of a $4.6 M donor. Those police were, in my opinion, significantly compromised by the enormous “gift” made to them JP Morgan Chase. Those police officers were, for all intents and purposes, working for JP Morgan Chase. They are mercenaries.
or Tom, but I blame our government, not the cops on the street. They enforce the laws as it is “interpreted” by governmental authorities. Kelly and Dimon are the governmental authorities in law enforcement.
My concern is that the regular cops, the workers, will get blame for carrying out the orders. It’s our governments that are are treating them as mercenaries, or more accurately pimping them out.
Part of the Left’s failure in the 1960s was due to the alienation of the police. They may not join the protests, but if they receive more blame than they are due for what happens to protesters, we’ll lose the war. You don’t blame the hands for what the mind has them do.
Your suggestion is far too close to the “I was just following orders” defense that we rightly rejected at Nuremberg for me to be comfortable with it.
No matter how many layers of orders, training, regulation, and whatever are in place, when “cops on the street” are pepper-spraying non-violent elderly women, macing groups of young women already encircled and kneeling, and shooting non-violent protesters with “projectiles” that leave them with skull fractures, then those cops on the street SHOULD bear at least some responsibility for carrying out those orders.
In my view, it doesn’t matter who is treating them as mercenaries — once the NYPD accepted the huge gift from JP Morgan Chase, then every NY cop knew he or she was being pimped out. Those cops who went ahead and acted on those immoral orders rightly share blame for doing so.
I suggest that every cop on the street does, in fact, have a mind that is perfectly capable of determining what his or her hands do — we learned from watching Arab Spring that some police and military do, in fact, reach a point where they will not inflict immoral violence on their own people.
I expect cops on the street to hold themselves to the same personal moral standards as everybody else.
Nuremburg analogy.
First, we’re not talking about the Holocaust, and I think the degree of wrongdoing makes a difference. When 6 million Jews are being exterminated, “I was just following orders” isn’t going to cut it as an excuse.
When it comes to removing protesters, the line is much blurrier. Following orders is a not an excuse for pepper spraying non-violent protesters or police brutality. It’s doubtful that there were orders for that.
Expecting individual police officers to ignore legal, if politically immoral, orders and thereby jeopardizing their jobs, well, that’s a lot to expect from anyone.
If the choice is following orders to step on what may turn out to be Constitutionally-protected toes or lose your job, that’s a hard decision.
The other thing is that your Nuremberg criticism expects a level of political awareness that most people, not just cops, don’t have.
I’ll try to do a post on this so we can have a less marginalized discussion.
The bullying cops have some similarities to the rank and file military people in our undeclared wars. Many of our soldiers who are probably not “bad people” have done horrible things with the tacit encouragement of their superiors. It is hard to see how such despicable behavior can happen unless those in charge create a culture of contempt for the public, or a segment of the public.
I hope there were many cops who were appalled by the brutality. I can understand their reluctance to speak out. They would likely be treated with the same harshness given to whistleblowers in the military or the workplace.
My question (where’s the Globe Spotlight when you need them?) is who is responsible for this culture of contempt, and how pervasive is it? Not every Occupy encampment has been subjected to these outrages.
I can think of two insidious motivations behind the brutality. First, to frighten people out of joining these demonstrations. This would explain the indiscriminate use of pepper spray on a pregnant women and the elderly. Second, it was possible that a brutal action would provoke the crowd into physical retaliation, which would provide fodder for the mainstream news to present the occupiers as “violent”.
I give the young people at U.C. Davis so much credit and gratitude for standing tough.
political motivations and effects. It could be happening in NYC for example. I think Occupy Oakland was more reflective of how the people in that mostly minority city are treated by law enforcement.
I think UC Davis was largely a result of incompetence. John Pike, the guy who maced the kids at UC Davis, used excessive force. If due process finds him violating the law or policy, he should be punished.
The fact that there was violence at Berkeley should have put all colleges–particularly the UC system–on alert. There should have been specific plans in place. An appropriate response would have been for the chancellor to work with protesters to maintain a safe and healthy environment without sacrificing their free speech. Instead, she just sent an eviction notice and sent in the police. That’s what the Davis Faculty Association has argued.