The Chancellor of University of California at Davis has placed two police persons on on “paid leave" and suspended Annette Spicuzza(1), the chief of the police department. The ‘leaves’ stem from the actions of John Pike(2) identified as a “Lieutenant”(3) in the UCDavis police department, casually spraying non-violent protestors with pepper spray as a first, and only, attempt to get them to disperse.
Its about time. However, I doubt anything will happen to them. The UCD administration is, probably, hoping to wait out the whole “Occupy” movement. Then they can quietly drop the investigation of this monster and his minions and, hopefully for them, no one will notice. Any civil suits arising from this mess will, of course, be vigorously defended at taxpayers’ expense. And the taxpayers will be responsible for paying the judgments when the university loses.
The thing that really upsets me about this whole thing is the casual and completely unnecessary way in which Pike sprayed a very small number of non-violent students who were blocking a sidewalk. It seems to me, it is becoming more and more common for police to start at the top of the chain of non-lethal force to get people to stop doing what they don’t like.
In the past, we have seen police escalate the level of violence used to quell demonstrations that ‘disturbed the peace.’ It starts with carrying off protestors and using tear gas to disperse crowds. Then it escalates to batons and pepper spray. Then to the use of deadly force.
Now, seemingly without concern or respect for the law, cops start at the top and use violent, non-lethal force on non-violent protestors. They don’t even try to get things under control without using pepper spray, batons, rubber bullets or bean bags shot fired from shotguns. Most cops shown suppressing the protests look like they believe what the protestors are doing is a personal affront.(4) Other cops just look like they were just waiting for an excuse to beat the hell out of somebody, and the protestors were as good as anyone else.
This has obvious implications for free speech and the right to assemble peaceably. It, pretty much, means - if you say/do anything the cops don’t like, they get to beat you over the head with a baton, shoot rubber bullets at you or pepper spray you. Free speech still flourishes outside of the “OWS’ protests but is becoming less and less free. Once you band together to demand changes; the cops make your individual liberties disappear and get to beat the hell out of you, as a side benefit.
I have to ask, how long before the government calls out the National Guard(5) and they start shooting protestors with real bullets? In this day and age technology has advanced so far that the massacre at Kent State in 1970 will look like a walk in the park. These advances in technology, coupled with the complete lack of regard for the law and absolutely no accountability, could spell the end of freedom of assembly and speech.
I guess my point is, there appears to be no control of the police and zero accountability. They seem to act with impunity. And they act violently with inappropriate amounts of force against anyone and everyone at the protests. Cops have never been very big on accountability, nor do they care much for individual civil liberties. Now, the don’t even seem to understand their role in our ‘free’ society.
There used to be a ‘check’ on police in that some of them refused to inflict pain on others unnecessarily. Unfortunately, with the advent of cop 2.0, all sense of moral and legal control have been abandoned.
These are dark days for the republic.
As an aside, Fox news commentator Megyn Kelly went on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News to discuss the incident. Kelly described pepper spray as “...essentially, a food product.” O’Reilly had already chimed in yet another example of his total stupidity and ignorance by asking if pepper spray ‘burned your eyes'. Both Kelly and O’Reilly are a new breed of idiots who use their positions to express opinions about something they know exactly nothing about.
- Spicuzza told the Sacramento Bee (http://bit.ly/sKoP5t) that police used the pepper spray after they were surrounded. Protestors were warned repeatedly beforehand that force would be used if they didn’t move, she said. There was no way out of that circle. They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.” Here's a video of her 'justification' for the use of pepper spray. I have to say that Ms. Spicuzza's impression of the events try the imagination of any reasonable, rational and sane person. The reporter's conclusion that the use of force was necessary is laughable.
- Mr. Pike has been warned by the hackivist group "Anonymous" to cease his illegal activities. As an aside, I can't believe they pay this bozo $116,000 a year in salary...
- Why do cops persist in adopting these military titles for themselves? Isn’t it enough to say this person is a supervisor? It’s like the widespread adoption of the Smokey the Bear hats by cops - as used by drill sergeants in the military. The real downside with these hats for cops is everyone, but the bozo wearing the hat, realizes it makes the cop look like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
- Given the large amount of money given to the NYPD by big business, it looks like the cops were ‘bought’ and paid for. They had to do what their benefactors wanted. In other words, they were no longer cops, but had become mercenaries.
- Can’t do that. All the National Guard are in Afghanistan, oppressing political and sectarian religious insurrection. In Afghanistan, if you don’t think like George W. Bush and a soldier is nearby, count on getting your beliefs controlled with a couple hundred rounds from an M2 machine gun. Since we can’t call out the National Guard, we’ll just have to ‘up arm’ the police so they can suppress dissent with the use of deadly force.
