by news and services and Yashenka Baca
A cop uses pepper spray on UC Davis University students who protested peacefully.(PHOTO REPRINTED FROM THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS)
A video that shows a dozen students from UC Davis being pepper-sprayed at point blank on Friday Nov. 18 by two university police officers, has gone viral worldwide. The students, part of the Occupy UC Davis movement, were passively sitting down and locking arms on a sidewalk, to protest the destruction of their encampment.
The video was shared in You tube and has more than 2 million views. The images show police officer, Lt. John Pike, casually spraying students with the strongest kind of pepper spray known to exist. According to witnesses, Pike sprayed them straight in the eyes and then in the mouth.
It all started Thu. 18, when a few dozen students set up encampment in the UC Davis main quad and stayed in 25 tents overnight. In the morning they received a letter from the University’s Chancellor, Linda Katehi, saying they had to remove the tents and leave by 3 p.m. Most Occupy UC Davis protesters decided to stay.
The campus police showed up in riot gear, destroyed the encampment, and pushed and dragged people around. News about the site being raided were quickly posted in social media and dozens of students showed up to see what was going on.
After seeing their encampment destroyed, a dozen of protesters decided to passively sit down on the sidewalk, they linked arms and chanted. Minutes later, the leader of the police group, Lt. John Pike, and another officer brought out their pepper spray cans, and sprayed students at point blank directly in the face.
Professor Nathan Brown said in an open letter to the chancellor that the officers even took care that some students would open their mouth so the spray would go down their throat. Two students had to be hospitalized and one more was coughing blood hours after the incident, according to the professor.
Crying and yelling are clearly heard in the video as hundreds of students watched in horror what was happening. The crowd then got together and started yelling “Shame on you! Shame on you!” while the police arrested the students that had being sprayed. Moments later the crowd yelled, “you can go!” to the officers, and then actually walked the police out of the quad.
The video went viral over the weekend. By Mon. the chief of campus police Anette Spicuzza and the two police officers who used the spray had been suspended. UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has being asked to resign by both students and a group of professors, but she refuses to step down.
In a very emotional statement, Katehi offered an apology to the students, later she told the press she doesn’t plan to resign. “If I leave right now we are going to be defined by what happened on Friday” she said. According to the latest declarations of the Chancellor, the police had been told not to use any violence against students, she said “there will be 5 reports (on the incident) and the truth will come out”.
The students of UC Davis are camping by the main quad of the campus again and now have 75 tents,three times more than before the incident last week. The protesters called for a General Strike on Mon. Nov. 28 to shut down all California campuses and prevent the UC Regents from holding their vote, as they will be meeting in four UC campuses on that date.
