I have not been particularly sympathetic to the activities of Occupy protests around the country, as the message often is one of self-wallowing pity, misplaced blame, and in some cases, vile rhetoric. The conduct often has been violent.
There is a video circulating of police at the University of California – Davis using pepper spray on non-violent students seated on what looks like a campus road.
I find the image of the policeman cavalierly shooting a voluminous spray into the faces of seated students upsetting, and condemnable.
A few minutes into the clip (@2:55) a girl keeps asking, “Does anyone have water?” For some reason that statement moved me quite a bit.
There’s nothing particular in the words that should have caused me such emotion, except perhaps that it brought forward from my subconscious memories of another statement repeated over and over again in another video shot in a hotel in California in 1968.
While the two events hardly were equal in magnitude or purpose, when I heard that girl asking whether anyone had water, I couldn’t help wondering whether there were any doctors in the house.
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The images are certainly distressing. But it leads one to the question — What should the policemen have done? One assumes that this was a lawful order, that the policemen were told by their superiors to remove the protestors for some reason. The protesters were told to move and they didn’t.
I guess it would have been better if the police had just dragged the protestors off to jail.
I really hate to be put in the position of defending the OWS morons, but if they were being peaceful then the police had no business removing them, order from superiors or not. It’s not even like they were on private property and refusing to leave at the owner’s request- they were at a university.
“Congress shall make no law …abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
yeah, cause we all know ambulances and other emergency vehicles never use roads.
“Congress shall make no law …abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, unless there is a really plausible justification?”
Like I said, not particularly (at all) happy about having to defend OWS, but I believe the freedoms provided for in the Constitution should extend to everyone, even people I detest. We’ve gotten far too accepting of legislative and regulatory “unless” exceptions to rights that are absolute guarantees under the Constitution.
[Partially snarky] Read the first word of your response, and then think VERY carefully about it. [/end snark]
The general police power granted to states to look after the health, safety, welfare and morals of their citizens puts them in a position to necessarily control CERTAIN rights. It’s why the framers specifically said “CONGRESS shall make no law ….” (meaning only Congress, and the states were free to make their own laws) as opposed to the language of the 2nd amendment that says “[S]hall not be infringed.” (meaning that firearms rights were not to be infringed by either the federal government OR the state governments).
Blocking a public thoroughfare definitely falls under the “protection of public safety” category.
The protesters are free to use public property in lawful ways. They were using it in an UNLAWFUL way: pitching tents on the ‘Davis’ Quad, which the police were trying to remove. The protesters then attempted to obstruct the police from doing their duty enforcing the University ordinances.
The #OWS protesters have EVERY right to peaceably assemble, just not WHEREVER they choose, just like other protesters.
Ditto Chuck.
Fer instance…NOBODY has a “right” to block the entrance to a building.
See…???
No one, EVER, has the right to block the road as part of a political protest.
People doing that are engaging in violence, because they are forcing those who want to use the road to stop, or go around some longer route.
If your political position is so worthless that you can’t advance it w/o blocking the road, then your position is utterly worthless, and you deserve to lose.
You want to “peacefully” assemble? Great! Do it OUT OF THE WAY. Your right to protest is NOT more important than my right to ignore you, and not ahve your worthless desires impinge upon my life.
For too long we have let the Left get away with criminal activity when advancing their political agenda. That needs to stop. You want to protest? Great, have fun. You want to disrupt other people’s lives while you protest? Go to hell. Or, at least, arrest them, drag them off to jail, and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
It makes me happy when criminal protesters (and anyone blocking a road, a bridge, etc is indeed criminal) get tear-gassed, maced, or pepper sprayed. They DESERVE it.
Being in a public place does not grant an unfettered right to infringe on the rights of others. That is the definition of public nuisance. And these protesters clearly chose to sit where they did for the nuisance effect.
There is nothing peaceful about their actions, passive-aggressive is still aggression.
Time was the cops would have carried them off one at a time – we’ve seen those types of arrests countless times in the past. Only now it carries the guarantee of excessive force complaints if not lawsuits.
So instead the police use pepper spray – the effects of which are quite well known, and also known to be non-serious and non-permanent.
I guess it would have been better if the police had just dragged the protestors off to jail.
Yes, it would.
Police are allowed to use reasonable force to overcome resistance. Pepper spraying, beating or tasering people who are passively resisting is not reasonable.
“Pepper spraying, beating or tasering people who are passively resisting is not reasonable.”
Wrong. Pepper spraying, beating or tasering criminal thugs who forcing themselves on others is the police’s duty, and a great public benefit. My right to go about my life is infinitely more valuable than your desire to criminally bock my way.
I don’t know why those antiscientific protesters are asking for water, since the consensus science in the European Union has found that water has no effect on dehydration. As for the use of pepper spray, would it have been ok if the police used water hoses to clear the roadway? And the protesters saw the pepper spray coming, they could have broken the path but chose to endure the spraying. If this had been an abortion clinic and the police were pepper spraying anti abortion activists I doubt any of the people in the crowd would be shouting “shame on you”.
Explanation: Maybe the protestors were asked to leave several times. They refused each request. They were asked to clear a path so that people might pass by. They refused each request. They were told that if they did not clear a path, they would be pepper sprayed. They refused to clear a path. They were pepper sprayed.
I do not see a problem with this explanation.
“Dragging” takes several PO’s for each protestor and they need to be cuffed first. “Dragging” can cause injury to both the PO’s and/or the protestors. The “injury” caused by pepper spraying is temporary. And they can avoid injury by compliance.
Sorry, Prof…you’ve gone a good bit “Ivory Tower” here.
Beat cops VERY often retire early because of the injuries they sustain in their work.
“Passive” OccupySTUPID people have a clearly defined history of becoming very active when faced with arrest.
You will note that the spray used by the officer also dyes the people who…by their refusal of a lawful order…subjected themselves to arrest. So it served two tactical purposes; identify the people for arrest, and suppress resistance to the officers.
It is a marvel that we get people to serve as police when we put them in the nutcracker we do.
Don’t be moved professor.
It appears that the police gave these protestors EVERY opportunity to move first, and MANY warnings in advance. The officer that Sprays them HOLDS UP the canister to show them that he is NOT bluffing them. The officer is NOT “spraying it down their throats” as some protesters have claimed, but standing three, maybe four, feet away and spraying at an angle (making the dispersal distance maybe five to six feet).
Further, the police were careful to only spray the protesters who were sitting and blocking the path forward. The police had no quarrel with the STANDING protesters who were not blocking the path.
This clip is likely SPECIFICALLY edited in order to remove the police giving warning after warning that pepper spray would be used if the protesters did not disperse. This was an action designed to attempt to cause a police action which could then be ‘spun’ into a “police brutality” story. The officers acted in an exemplary fashion.
This is part of the progression of escalation to try to get unlawful protestors to vacate an area. First the police ask nicely. Then they command under color of law. Then they use pepper spray, to try to get the protesters to move on their own. Finally, if necessary, they physically remove individuals, which the pepper spray has softened their physical resistance to being physically moved.
myiq2xu – this is actually an entirely reasonable use of force given the circumstances. Mild chemical agents (yes, they’re MILD) employed to cause discomfort to the protestors to cause them to move on their own is FAR preferable to physical force to move the protestors not of their own volition. The latter risks far worse injury to the protestors as well as the officers in question, such as dislocated arms, broken bones, back injuries, concussions from struggling, etc….
By the way – notice that the officers all had Paintball guns. Had they wanted to create a LOT more physical discomfort, they would have SHOT the protesters. Getting shot with a paintball, especially at reasonably close range hurts a LOT.
Further, notice at 6:45 that the protesters ACTIVELY start threatening the police (human microphone) telling them that “Please do not return. We’ve given you a moment of peace. We will not follow you.”
It seems the conflicting opinions are based on the right of these people to “peaceably assemble”; when these assemblies are in violation of laws designed to provide public safety, then the police certainly have the authority to disperse said assembly.
What’s the beef? They wouldn’t leave, so they got sprayed. Next time, this can be easily avoided. Just leave.
It wasn’t even “leave.”
It was first “please remove your tents, you can’t camp here or put up tents” and then later “move 5 feet in either direction to clear the road so we can remove the tents you refused to remove.”
These petulant, spoiled OWS whiners long ago wore out their welcome. The police asked them to dispurse. They refused.
This plea for water is indicative of the woeful failings of this entire movement: expecting others to clean up their mess.
While people may have the right to peacefully assemble, I have little sympathy for people who assemble in a place and effectively deny access to that space to everyone else. What gives these people the right to claim the common areas of our country for their own?
It seems the students that were sprayed were blocking a road or access to some facility. What gives them the right to do that? And then some have said it would have been better for the police to drag them off and arrest them. How many times can we expect the police to be kicked, spit upon, stuck with needles, bitten, etc, before they take out the pepper spray?
These kids have more hormones than brains at that age and many of them are simply exhibiting a mob mentality. They are transferring their adolescent rage upon “the man”. Oh boy, lets now try to rationalize their temper tantrums and give them a pass when they would be better served with anger management training. This aren’t the days of protesting the Vietnam War anymore. These kids are protesting because they are self-centered spoiled brats who don’t like the fact that life is not “fair”. We should never allow them to piggy back on the validity of the Vietnam/civil rights era.
I can’t sympathize too much here. Pepper spray has become the method of choice for police to encourage people to comply. Why? Because there is MUCH less chance of a lawsuit than if you shoot someone or beat them up and because it breaks resistance very quickly.
Those people were not “peaceful protesters.” Look at some video from the 60s. When police start dragging people away, they often struggle. Even a little bit of wriggling from the protester turns the “dragging away” into a wrestling match between a protester and one, two, three or more cops.
Then someone inevitably screams, “Police brutality!” And a riot ensues. And somehow, the cops always get blamed.
The cops defused this before it became an issue, endangering them as well as the protesters. Good for the cops. They did the right thing.
Whatever happened to when the police tell you to move you moved? Isn’t not following those orders breaking the law? Times have sure changed over the last few decades. We used to respect the police and realize they were there for our protection. Not any more. All you hear now is police brutality. It boggles the mind that the police all over the country are using this tactic…beating up inocent citizens. Baloney. I don’t doubt the police get burned out with the disrespect and outright aggression some people subject them to.
Your rights end at the end of your nose. Beyond that you are likely getting into someone else’s territory. Blocking streets and harassing people are not guaranteed rights. Camping in and trashing public property is not a right either. People who have no idea what they are tallking about or have an ax to grind have turned the whole Bill of Rights and the Constitution topsy turvy. They are interpreting these documents in a way never meant to be.
Interesting that you thought of Robert Kennedy. I thought of Terri Schiavo.
If a subject is being actively resistant proper response includes what are called “compliance techniques”. This includes pepper spray and other chemical irritants. If you look at the video you can the occubabies have their arms linked, preventing them from being “gently” dragged off. This qualifies as active resistant. Some people think “active resistant” means fighting with the police. Those people are wrong. Fighting takes you to a whole different level on the continuum of force; a level where you will probably end up wishing for pepper spray.
So we don’t have the whole stage set here, but if the protestors had been ordered to leave and didn’t. Then sat down, locked arms to prevent individual removal that constitutes active resistance, then the use of pepper spray is a valid, measured response to gain compliance. It doesn’t matter if it “looks bad” to people unaware of the use of force doctrine. That’s how I was trained anyway.
Yeah she wants water, that stuff stings. I’ve been sprayed everytime I have to recertify and nobody felt bad for me. Wash it off. Or don’t. It stops hurting eventually.
Slightly off-topic but still very relevant
The NEW YORK POST did something that most newspapers are now forbidden to do. They did some actual investigative reporting. They have caught at least part of the leadership of the OWS movement [including one of their mystery finance committee] living in a luxury hotel [$700 a night]. One of them works for financial services giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/wall_street_cra_pad_s31YWPjPTt0TYuxLGnu7IK
This needs to be spread far and wide. As the old British military toast goes, “Confusion to the enemy!”.
Subotai Bahadur
It appears that even those protesting for the 99% to get free from the influence of the 1% are being led by the 1%.
We all knew this was out there. The only way that this sort of protest could get any sort of traction is if it was being bankrolled and managed by big-money liberals. If it wasn’t, they would have exhausted their cash weeks ago.
This is all a smoke and mirrors game. It’s ONE group of liberal “top 1-percenters” activating the masses in order to drive their agenda to try to take money from other “top 1-percenters” to fund social programs the liberal top 1-percenters think is necessary to “protect” their station but they don’t want to pay for.
I have mixed feelings about this. I work for a police agency and talk to dozens of officers (both in our department and outside agencies) daily. I have a lot of sympathy for police officers, especially the ones out on the streets. The taunts, insults, aggression, and physical assaults they have to deal with (along with the frequent threat of serious danger) take a toll over time. Outside of the comparatively rare brash, bad-ass type, I find the overwhelming majority to be very decent, good people intent on doing the right thing. But, just as George Will says— that the safe arrival of 10,000 commercial airline flights day in and day out does not make news, even though its an astoundingly wonderful statistic—the unfair case is that police are usually only in the news when they are killed or accused of using unwarranted force.
That being said, it bothers me to see an officer spraying something that causes physical pain on people with the abandon of spraying insects with bug spray.
Yes, these are obnoxious college kids … I have little sympathy for them … but they are kids, not dangerous street criminals. Perhaps the video is misleadingly edited. If the protesters were truly peaceful, then they would have willingly allowed themselves to be handcuffed after receiving warnings. You can’t really tell from the video.
Either way, I don’t like the idea of inflicting physical pain upon citizens … just like we don’t allow officers to “rough up” (in a way that does not create permanent physical injury) people being arrested.
If the situation is a dangerous one, or in danger of becoming a dangerous one, then I’d say spray away. But from that video (again, it could be misleading) it does not appear the situation was a dangerous one.
LukeHandCool (who couldn’t stop laughing when talking on the phone with a lady with whom he used to work. She was accepted into the academy and became an officer. When Luke last talked to her on the phone she had just made her first arrest. When Luke asked her how it went she said, “Even after I put the handcuffs on her she was still trying her best to bite me. She got down on her knees and got a hold of my pants leg and started chewing on it like a mad dog!” God bless our police officers!)
“That being said, it bothers me to see an officer spraying something that causes physical pain on people with the abandon of spraying insects with bug spray.”
So, it would be OK if the officer was showing the appropriate level of anxiety…???
Dumb.
Yep, probably. But sometimes I like to err on the side of being a little dumb if it means nobody gets hurt. I’ll gladly admit I’m very likely wrong in this instance.
Amen brother..wore the bag for thirty five years..started before tasers, pepper spray or video..just night sticks. Sap gloves, muscle…hats off to all who serve and deal with stuff..
Fear not, LHC, I can say from experience being sprayed with Pepper Spray is not “painful”. It is startling, uncomfortable and unsettling, but causes no enduring physical trauma. It takes ones mind of everything but breathing and surviving. Every officer in that video had probably gone through training where he or she was placed in a strongly gassed chamber, told to remove their masks, and forced to sit or stand for the length of time it took to sing a chorus of “Cry Me a River” before being allowed to exit and recover.
I think Chuck Skinner has the best take on this, and professor after reviewing the video twice I think the officer doing the spraying was careful and humane. The second time I listened to it I did hear some anti-Semitic comments that would have turned me off if I were prone to sympathize with student law-breakers.
A law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force “fairly standard police procedure.”
Story: Occupy protests spread to college campuses
The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed by police with batons on Nov. 9.
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.
–GatewayPundit
Pepper spray on an actively resisting “subject” (sitting down, linking arms and refusing to comply with a legal order is considered resisting) may seem like a heavy handed response to people who’ve never been in the position of moving a group of people but it’s less dangerous for the subjects and the police than physically removing a non-compliant subject.
You had a line of people occupying a roadway and a crowd of a couple of hundred people surrounding the cops. To remove them physically would have taken two officers per occupier and as soon as they were picked up, they would have started screaming and crying, further agitating the crowd that vastly outnumbered the police. That’s a recipe for total disaster. That greatly increases the chance of actual physical harm for both the police and the protesters. If the police had left, it would have emboldened the occupiers and future removal would have been far more difficult.
Was it a perfect solution? Well, the perfect solution would have been for the protesters to leave the area and for Chancellor Katehi to have cleared them out day one instead of waiting.
While we’re discussing a post which associates two such disparate events as this one and RFK’s assasination, what was immediately called to my mind (strangely, perhaps) was Cheney’s answer about gay marriage in his debate with John Edwards.
Cheney is a conservative … with a lesbian daughter.
I found it a lovely moment when he honestly said he “struggles” with the issue of gay marriage daily. Having known many wonderful gay people, I do, too.
I think the use of force by the police is something else that should be “struggled with.”
But, I’m open to being shown I’m wrong.
There has always been…and always should be…a distinct tension between good police practice and civil liberties.
NOT being aware that power corrupts is to be voluntarily corrupt yourself. Conversely, bleeding about this incident is to surrender to the forces of dystopia these idiots represent. Which is precisely what they have been taught will result.
These police officers did what they were taught to do, and they applied a measured, deliberate response to a clear defiance of a lawful order. (So deliberate, you wanted more panic/fear/conflict on their expressions.)
BTW, milk would be superior to water…though not much.
I’m not sure pepper spray qualifies as a “deliberate measured response” here. It is a intended as a non-lethal response to a violent attack — during the attack, not after it, and not even to prevent it.
Once the offender is no longer actively attacking a police officer, it’s use is no longer warranted, and most police depts will come down very hard on an officer who uses it out of line.
Pepper spray — like tasers — is never legitimately used to compel people who are not actively commiting violence to obey an order. The cops have many other appropriate ways to do that.
Other methods such as physically yanking them off the pavement, putting them in handcuffs and trying to march them through a crowd of people screaming at them?
They had two choices: Surrender the rule of law to the mob or try and remove the protesters and their property using a method that is safer for the cops and doesn’t cause lasting damage to the protesters. The first choice is out because government never surrenders to a mob long term because it just guarantees more people will decide they aren’t required to obey laws either. The decision was made to remove people violating the law. Since the police were vastly outnumbered, I can’t exactly fault them for doing their job in a way that minimized the chances they would be injured. It’s not pretty but if you watch the video, the people sitting down were prepared for what happened. They knew they were going to be sprayed and I don’t have any sympathy for their attempt to use this as a case of police brutality… which it is not.
You are mistaken about the intended uses of pepper spray. There are protocols for using it both offensively and defensively. It’s sorta like saying you can use a computer to play games but not to send email. It makes no sense.
No you’re wrong. Pepper spray is not a derivative of Mace. Pepper spray is a derivative of the stuff in salsa. Entirely different chemicals. Mace at least in my state was severely limited a long time before pepper spray came along. I was glad when it did.
I just read this at gatewaypundit.
I believe this action was appropriate after the entire context is examined, and knowing the proper and desired procedures for handling this type of “peaceful” protest.
The poignant plea for “water” is touching, but don’t get sentimental. They are still hoping for that “Kent State moment.”
And lovely truther and Marxist Van Jones says it will be getting much worse in 2012.
Be prepared.
“(So deliberate, you wanted more panic/fear/conflict on their expressions.)”
I didn’t say any such thing. The fact that he went and made another pass bothered me. Should he have continued until the can was emptied?
Here is what I think is bothering me:
Pepper spray, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) was initially developed to momentarily stop an aggressive act (such as an attempted rape) to allow the potential victim a few precious seconds to escape. Purely a defensive weapon. I bought my daughter a small palm-sized canister at the sporting goods store for when she goes jogging at odd hours.
Now, considering that we’re talking about the protesters not being injured themselves nor injuring police as they are dragged away, is spraying them with pepper spray going to stop them from struggling as they are dragged away? I highly doubt it. My instinct tells me it would make them struggle more frantically, increasing the risk of injury.
I can clearly see it being used in an instance of an unarmed citizen attacking an officer with his fists to momentarilly disable them … again, as a defensive weapon … but not as what almost seems to be a form of punishment. I can’t buy the argument that spraying them with an irritant would stop them from struggling.
Pepper Spray is a derivative of Mace which is a derivative of tear gas which is a derivative of mustard gas which is really unpleasant. I probably missed some in the chain. They are all “behavior agents”. Both offensive and defensive.
Your instinct is wrong. They are a lot less likely to struggle and if they do they are much less likely to be effective. Less chance of everyone getting hurt all around. Does pepper spray hurt? Sure. So comply with the nice officer and get your butt off the pavement and onto the sidewalk. How tough is that?
Why isn’t the officer showing more concern? Because he’s been sprayed probably three or four times in training already. He knows it hurts but will wear off and never harmed him more than making his hair smell like enchilada sauce.
According to the professionals, it gives them something to think about when they are given further orders.
Now, I am not one to uncritically accept what professionals say.
On the other hand, I figure it would have a certain “compliance” effect on me.
He should have continued until he was sure he had produced the intended effect. If that meant reloading twice…go with power up.
Well it sounds like the OWS crew edited it to make it look like an unprovoked action on the Police’s part.
I don’t have much sympathy left for that.
I’m not sure the video should be taken at face value, but having lived here for 50 years I can tell you that a police behavior of this type is not especially surprising — esp for campus police (a very discredible bunch in the UC system).
The police in Davis, Berkeley, Oakland, and SF are quite capable of unprovoked actions of this type. They know how they are viewed and unfortunately some of them take a kind of pride in that.
The civic authorities here are just as weak and dysfunctional as people tend to think they are (if not more so) and this both undermines the police and lets them get away with this sort of behavior.
In short, all too many cops here agree with the more intemperate comments made in this thread. But unlike commenters who are probably just blowing off steam, these are cops and when they choose to blow off steam, the results are very bad, to say the least.
I would caution anyone against “taking sides” in these “protests” in CA — there are in fact all too few “good guys” here on whose side you would really like to be on.
Right. This is hardly some dangerous riot. It’s a bunch of obnoxious college kids on a college campus. There’s no law against being obnoxious. Context has to play a part here.
I still don’t buy the assertion that spraying someone with a painful irritant is going to pacify them and make them easy to drag away. I can see it stopping someone in his tracks and taking his mind off of attacking someone … but to make them go suddenly limp and passive? Usually if you are in acute pain (especially to your eyes) you become frantic. That will likely help you escape if you are a potential victim … but I don’t see any parallel to get someone being dragged away to give up struggling.
Again, my (admittedly layman’s opinion) is that this is a misuse of a defensive weapon … using it as a form of punishment (which is not the police’s place) for desregarding the officers’ orders.
If this is policy for this agency, I think it needs to be reexamined.
“I still don’t buy the assertion that spraying someone with a painful irritant is going to pacify them and make them easy to drag away.”
OK. Swell. But you are not an expert, nor are you responsible for writing UOF guidelines.
Let us know when you are.
“But you are not an expert …”
Flattery will get you nowhere, Snarky.
i’m not a cop, but we did do some riot training in the Guard when i was in…and moving resisting bodies is hard dangerous w*rk.
when you are protesting and ordered to disperse, you have two choices: you can move or you can stay and break the law. if you choose to break the law, you should NOT be surprised if bad things happen to you. the flip side to freedom of choice is the responsibility of taking the consequences of your choices as your own. these people are not victims, and i have no sympathy for them.
and if i was going to have to wrestle with them to get them out of the street, i’d rather start out with them being in a temporarily debilitated state via pepper spray than in full possession of their faculties.
if the are busy dealing with burning skin and mucosa, gasping for breath and with runny eyes they can’t see clearly with, it’s going to be that much easier to haul them off safely than if they can kick, bite, strike or stab me and my fellow officers.
they were given a chance to comply, and chose not to: using pepper spray to partially incapacitate them prior to removal seems reasonable. some sort of force was going to be needed, so what would you have the police use, fire hoses? there’s an image from our past. tear gas? same sort of complaints, and a much larger chance of non-involved persons getting a dose, not to mention more side effects.
how about physical force, such as batons? no? tasers? stun guns? bean bag guns? no?
suddenly pepper spray doesn’t seem so bad does it?
although, to be honest, someone needs to go around and spray the parents who raised such morons, just for inflicting them on society.
For the record, I support pepper-spraying hippies under any and all circumstances. Especially when they smell too bad to punch. That hippie smell…it doesn’t wash off.
The video was filmed by the Occupy people, and edited by the occupy people to put the police in the worst light possible. The protestors defied lawful orders to move and pepper spray was the least damaging weapon available . . . unless you want to endanger unarmed firemen by removing them from their stations and to put needed fire safety equipment at risk for the unearned comfort of the law breakers.
“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”
Quite true, but remarkably several cops there seemed quite pleasant at times. Even in a closely edited video. Wonder what the raw footage would have shown?
Wm, get a life. So they get pepper sprayed, boo hoo. That’s the price of resistance. These people need to get off their duffs, take a bath, get a job, go back to class, and stop being a public nuisance. If they want to protest, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the place to go.
So the police subjected these people to the treatment that police subject themselves to during training. It is routine to get a face full of pepper sprays in training for a police officer.
It’s not rubber bullets. It’s not billy clubs. It’s not canon or machine guns.
We aren’t talking Bull Connor. We are talking whiny kids engaged in street theater.
The police gave them exactly what they wanted, and it so happens that what they wanted was also exactly what they deserved. Win – win!
The worst part is that they successfully ran the cops off; that will certainly embolden them for future bratty demonstrations.
I think they should have tazed them too.
So the Liberal Fascists who run UC-Davis ordered pepper spray to be used against the students they taught to behave in this manner.
Somehow, conservatives and the TEA Party are sure to be blamed…
>>>how about physical force, such as batons? no? tasers? stun guns? bean bag guns? no? <<<
I'd suggest Lysol spray…
SUCH a Nazi-fascist…!!!
Nothing…EVER…stronger than dilute Glade air freshener…!!
As any non-expert will tell lower non-experts, if you’re not an expert, you shouldn’t express your opinion.
All the non-experts … where do they all belong?
“Officers in Pepper Spray Incident Placed on Leave”
http://news.yahoo.com/officers-pepper-spray-incident-placed-leave-182151195.html
“The president of the 10-campus University of California system also weighed in on the growing fallout from Friday’s incident at UC Davis, saying that he is “appalled” at images of students being doused with pepper spray and plans a far-reaching, urgent assessment of law enforcement procedures on all campuses.”
No kidding. You mean police departments, aka bureaucracies that share many of the same negative characteristics of other bureaucracies, might need to reexamine their policies from time to time?
Shazaam.
LHC, please do not equate the gutless responses of a wimpy, liberal academic talking heads with real life. “On leave” means with pay. Of course bigwigs are going to be appalled, appalled I say. That’s what they do. None of them wanted a confrontation. They just wanted the officers to make it all go away. Legally. Now they have to blame someone for that.
The police officers appeared conflicted and uncomfortable, rather than aggressive. College children are unfortunately sometimes prone to joining in with whatever seems trendy or exciting in the moment, like Obama in 2008.
Remember how the president and faculty responded to the chargs against the lacrosse team at Duke? I no longer pay any attention to these dweebs who want peace at any price. They want law and order but cavil at the methods to attain it. They side with the instigators because it is easier for them.And heaven forfend hey investigate to see if something is true or not.
Mob rule is mob rule. This movement will only get worse if the police don’t fight back with whatever method they can use. These people will not leave until the last ditch. I have no sympathy for them. These college kids incurred these debts and now want them forgiven. Maybe I should start a movement to have my credit cards, car payment and mortgage forgiven. What’s the difference? You incur the debt, you pay it off. However, most of these people are misfits, hippies and drug users looking for a handout. Really the dregs of society. It seems to me to more humane to spray them with pepper than to hit them over the head with a baton maybe causing a concussion.
What would be the alternative? Leave them alone to do their stuff and ignore the rigts of everyone else?
Anyone remember the arrest of John Ziegler for standing outside the USC Annenberg School excellence in journalism awards ceremony?
http://youtu.be/HE5OMfIsbHw
@ forksdad was right. I should have used “forerunner” instead of “derivative”.
Thanks! We had plenty of trouble convincing people they weren’t getting ‘maced’ twenty some years ago! I’ve seen macho types put pepper spray on popcorn and ice cream to prove its harmlessness (and their own masochism I presume). Mace used to get sprayed onto a person’s clothing to avoid getting it into their eyes and such.
I have seen lots of misinformation on here about what the UOF guidelines are and are for such as, ‘pepper spray is a response to a deadly attack’ type of comment. That was not the only clear misunderstanding and misstatement but it did stick in my mind. You would think the professor would have studied the subject slightly before posting so as to inform people about the use of force. Officers have to understand what is ‘reasonable’ about the use of force in any given situation, perhaps the Prof could help inform his readers if not the general public.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/11/it-figures-uc-davis-students-agreed-to-be-pepper-sprayed-before-incident-video/
I don’t recall Sirhan Sirhan going up to Bobby Kennedy and asking him if he minded being shot, giving him a chance to get up and walk away.
With the full context of the story, showing the warnings, direct and to the individuals about to be sprayed, do you now feel the same about the event?