The pepper-spraying of America
The horrific events this weekend at the University of California-Davis are the inevitable blowback of a security-state-on-steroids, turning against the "homeland" it was supposed to be protecting.
The pepper-spraying of America
In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, American taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in the name of homeland security turning municipal police departments into miniature armies, wielding everything from M-16s to tanks. The New York Police Department even claims it can shoot down a jetliner — anything to protect U.S. civilians.
Friday night on a college campus in Davis, Calif., the unfathomable happened — a group of students came under attack from a chemical agent. Two of them were hospitalized.
But those behind the incident had nothing to do with international terrorism. They were officers of the University of California-Davis campus police force, dressed in full riot gear, unleashing a barrage of pepper spray at point blank range against roughly 10 students who had locked arms on a sidewalk in an act of civil disobedience.
The shocking episode, which took place after the cops had ripped down tents belonging to students supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, was captured on videos that quickly went viral, and sparked outrage from coast to coast.
“This is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population,” wrote the Atlantic’s James Fallows, a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. He wondered how Americans would react if similar images were broadcast out of Syria or China, and he compared photos of the event to those of civil rights protesters fire-hosed by Birmingham’s Sheriff Bull Connor in 1963.
“It doesn’t look good,” said David Klinger, a former Los Angeles police officer who now teaches criminal justice, specializing in the use of force, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Klinger stressed that he wasn’t familiar with the protocols of the campus cops — but he wondered why they didn’t try hauling them away first.
The uproar at the campus just outside Sacramento — the two cops who fired the pepper spray are now on “administrative leave” (sound familiar, Penn Staters?) and there are widespread calls for university chancellor Linda Katehi to resign — is arguably the worst episode of what could charitably be “overpolicing” since the Occupy movement started, but it’s not an isolated incident.
In recent days, we’ve seen police fracture the skull of an Iraq War veteran in Oakland with a tear gas canister, campus police at Berkeley striking peaceful protesters with batons, and officers in New York City arresting credentialed journaliststrying to cover the raid of Zuccotti Park.
One place that’s so far been spared any controversy about police tactics has been Philadelphia, where some 62 Occupy protesters have been arrested so far in acts of civil disobedience. In each case, protesters who locked arms and refused to move — exactly as happened in Davis — were simply pulled away and booked without injury or incident.
Still, could it happen here?
Philadelphia police wouldn’t comment last night, referring questions to the mayor’s office. It’s unclear how cops might deal with eventual resisters at the Dilworth Plaza camp, where eviction notices have been posted ahead of a $50 million construction project.
This much is clear: The campus cops 3,000 miles away have offer a blueprint of what not to do.
The swelling tide of police violence against peaceful demonstrators comes after 10 years of citizens’ passive acquiescence toward the Patriot Act and expanded government snooping, waterboarding terror suspects, and giving urban police departments more high-tech firepower than many Third World nations. Now our security-state-on-steroids is being turned against non-violent protesters here in the “homeland.” Talk about blowback!
On Saturday night, UC-Davis’ under-seige chief Katehi left an urgent meeting about the crisis; hundreds of students cleared a path and glared at the chancellor’s long “walk of shame” in stark chilling silence, with no sound except the stark clicking of her heels on the pavement. Two powerful questions screamed from the silence.
Why?
And why does Linda Katehi still have a job?
MSL -- failure to follow a police officer's orders = Disorderly Conduct. If a police officer tells you, "MOVE. NOW."... and you don't "MOVE. NOW", you can be arrested for DO. Disorderly conduct is a "catchall" type of offense.— IggleFan68- If the order is to disrupt my non-violent protest, then isn't that order, by definition, breaking the law? isn't any quashing of First Amendment rights a crime?
For those that think it was a crime, I'll play along: If it was, in fact, a crime in blocking the sidewalk, is the response proportional to the crime? Chemical spray at point-blank range? I don't think so, and there's not many Constitutional lawyers that would agree with that assessment either.
Disorderly conduct, nice try... thanks for playing..— TheLowDown 
Iggle, please read the definition of disorderly conduct in your jurisdiction and get back to me. Hopefully it's not as fascist as you seem to think it is.- Iggle, was this "disorderly conduct"? http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3848984
- Or this? http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3847910
- Has anyone figured out how these OWS people earn a living?— Manny Trillo
- "Has anyone figured out how these OWS people earn a living?" . . . Kinda like wondering how Jesus' disciples earned a living, "occupying" Galilee as they did. You could say this whole OWS thing started with Jesus' disorderly conduct in clearing the temple of, as he put it, a "den of thieves".— montani semper liberi
- sarah, is the lithium wearing off?— montani semper liberi
- Why does Will still have a job?
"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."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45374977/ns/us_news-life/#.TsqG-Vb3WUk— rudytbone - Pepper spray is completely not lethal, although highly irritating. Nobody was killed or beaten. Still my favorite form of non-lethal crowd control is a firehouse, it moves people and isn't an irritant.— rmg154
- In recent days, we’ve seen police fracture the skull of an Iraq War veteran in Oakland with a tear gas canister,
I wouldn't jump on his bandwagon to soon. He was kicked out of the Marine Corp and started a website called Ihatethemarinecorp.com Not exactly a stellar individual. But if that is representative of OWS then good for you.— rgreen72 - Iggy -
Looking beyond the questions about legality - assuming that they were breaking the law, then how should police respond? I'd say that the action shown was irresponsible. They were surrounded by hundreds of protestors. Their mandate should be to arrest the "law-breakers" while minimizing the chances of further hostilities. Walking up to those kids and spraying them point blank it the face was far more likely to incite more violent resistance than simply going up to the protestors, picking them up, and arresting them.
We have here yet another thread of rightwingers applauding the use of force and advocating for the violent suppression of fellow Americans on the basis of guilt-by-association.
Lawbreakers among OWS should be denounced. They only detract from the legitimate grievances with respect to broad-scale policies that create the economic inequality that harms us all (except for the filthy rich).
What's unfortunate is when extremist rightwingers seek to exploit anything the can - overreach on the part of law enforcement, rapes among the camps that attracted an unlawful element that exists in our society independent of the OWS camps, and violence from the tiny % of OWSers who advocate violence as means to address their grievances, simply for the purpose of partisan point-scoring. Such exploitation only does a disservice to non-extremist conservatives.
I would think that you would want to disassociate yourself from people like our excrement-obsessed bile.atkins, Iggy. Kind of surprised to see that you aren't.— Talking point sleuth - "Walking up to those kids and spraying them point blank it the face was far more likely to incite more violent resistance than simply going up to the protestors, picking them up, and arresting them."
While you make some valid points above, I'd have to disagree with the section that I've quoted. Based on video that I've seen from other recent OWS demonstrations, it seems that the forceable separation of arm-locked demonstrators is much more violent, much more likely to injure the students and/or police, and more apt to incite further violent resistence. In recent protests, the officers had to pound on the arms of the protestors, violently grab and tug at the connected body parts, forcibly lift the protestor (and in some cases having the individual fall and hit his head on the ground). Do you really believe that they would have been able to simply "go up to the protestors, pick them up and arrest them", in some sort of a peaceful and gentle fashion? Why do you think that they were locking arms?— legatus - I also love how people who hae never worked as police officers can tell them how to react. Yes I know you smoked weed in college and discussed this with your friends but that doesnt make you an expert.— rgreen72
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