UC Davis Student Admits Protesters Surrounded Cops and Wouldn't Let Them Leave Read

No more so than you, sir.

:smilewinkgrin:

 

That is fine if you want to believe that. None the less this issue is just wrong and those officers who sprayed these people are criminals.

 

Agreed she said what she said, but they could have walked around them or went back the way they came if they wanted to leave but it is clear in the video they were not trying to leave. Look at the video. Also the police had direct orders not to arrest or use force. Like I said military seeks to cover the truth about their own. The officers need to be fired who used the spray along with the chief and the rest of those officers who were there should have a letter of reprimand in their file and lose 1 months pay for not stopping the criminal act of their comrades.
Read what the chancellor said;
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ca-chancellor-fire-pepper-spray-incident-15018881

 

You mean you didn't see them fight their way out? I watched very close and noticed that they took the extra work of actually turning their bodies, then picking up one foot and then the other and they kept doing that with their feet until they were gone.

All the while, they seemed to have to use their magical powers to part the crowd like butter in order for all that space to walk in. It must have been very draining on them.

I can't believe you didn't notice.

Shame on you!
Shame on you!
Shame on you!

Oh wait...I'm not one of them...

 

Gina, I respsect your opinion on many topics on this board; so I'm going to try to appeal to your reason for a moment.

There are several videos that ALL start at the point of the campus policeman spraying the students. After seeing the students who were sitting on the sidewalk with locked arms get sprayed, the policemen then turned, and were given a wide threshold.

My first question: if you had been blocking the policemen, and now saw that they were willing to escalate against resistance, would you be more likely to move out of the way?

Second question: What happened in the 30 minutes prior to when the video starts? Or are we to assume that the campus policemen simply showed up and immediately started spraying the students?

 

Don, I appreciate your attitude.

I'd love to see a video of the whole thing, but can't find one. The longest one I found was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AbYHRg3qlw

It does start with the pepper spraying, but it also pans out a few times during it and while the officers are arresting people. If you look, you can see that the cement in front of and behind appears to already be very clear while that is going on.
Even at just a tiny bit past the first minute, the video pans out and shows the entire road behind the police car is completely, totally clear. Not a soul in sight on the cement. Please watch it close and notice that.

As far as the question of what I would do if I was protesting a cause I believe in and saw that police were willing to escalate against resistance? I don't know. I've never been in a situation where the police tried to use force to make us move. If it was something I honestly believed in, I'd hope that I'd stand my ground despite the consequences. It would have to be something major for me to take that risk in the first place though. So far, I've either not lived long enough, not lived in certain places, or not had something I believed in threatened to the point where I felt taking such drastic action was needed. The most I've resorted to using has been my pen.

I'm thankful for that, although I do fear that the time is coming when decent American citizens are going to have to take a stand against government corruption and rights violations if we want to maintain the freedoms we still enjoy.

 

Not one of us was there so we are all conjecturing as to exactly what happened.

One thing I do know, when a police officer orders me to do something, I do it. I have never been ordered to do something I should not do, although my family and I have been treated unfairly by LEOs in a country where law enforcement was truly corrupt. We had no choice but to obey them- they did not bother with pepper spray if you resisted, and there was no one to video them.

The police officers here in the USA by and large show great restraint when faced with these types of situations, and receive a great deal of criticism when they are just trying to do their jobs. It is a wonder that anyone is still willing to serve in a position of authority any more- be it as a police officer, a teacher, or a pastor.

 

So we all agree that we have no idea what actually happened in the minutes prior to the campus police that led up to the decision to use the pepper spray. You're absolutely correct about the area behind the campus police. . .Which begs the question, why did the campus police chief initially state that the campus police were attempting to leave, and the students wouldn't let them; and why do we now have a statement from a student who was allegedly there corroborating the campus police chief's statement?

Thus, my very first post on this subject, which stated that I'm not armchair quarter-backing this because we don't have the full story. Contrary to what a certain poster would have everyone believe, I have never condoned what these campus police did; but I also refuse to condemn them until we have all the facts, or as many as we can get. All I've done is promote the fact that there's another side to this story that we still haven't actually heard (has anyone seen a statement from the campus policemen that were involved?).

On that last part, I wholeheartedly agree. The age of the Panopticon is upon us, although I think Jeremy Bentham could never have imagined the scale to which it has been implemented.

 

Excuses and denial to justify ex-military in police uniform doing violence on citizens peacefully exercising their constitutional rights, but there is no doubt that some hate freedom and seek to destroy it even stomping on the dead who have fought for it.

 

Out of curiosity, let's pretend for a moment the students were performing some action that prevented the cops from simply walking away; what would you have had the cops do?

 

Don, Keep in mind that you are leaving a lot out to justify the criminal actions of the police. In other words you are asking a loaded question. They should not have engaged the students at all according to their orders so this should have never happened. However to your loaded question;

It depends on what that action was. If a person or a crowd is engaged in illegal activity and the police are being physically hampered, or there is clear indication that such is likely, by that I mean literally being touched and attacked, I would support going as far as lethal force if need be to protect them from harm, but if there was other options they should be tried first.
If you mean the students just standing and blocking their way, remain calm, call for back up and when it arrives start with dialoged to extract the officers and moving to pepper spray, tear gas, dogs or lethal weapons if need be.

I am in full support of any law-enforcement who is doing their job properly and not using unnecessary force or violating peoples rights and freedoms as an excuse to do their job. I am not one of those who feels law-enforcement needs to be put in harms way to be politically correct. That should be clear by my stance in an earlier post about those people who were destroying property and looting when I said they needed to be shot after being warned not to come out after curfew, which I still stand by. Use the force needed to do the job to keep the officers safe as well as the property of the innocent. However I am in total disagreement with law-inforcement using their position to bully and take on themselves the role of law makers and be judge and jury.

 

Actually, no, I'm not leaving out anything. You receive orders to go clear out some tents, and let's say for the sake of argument, you also receive orders not to engage the occupants of those tents. You arrive on scene, you start talking to the occupants, and then you find yourself surrounded. You and three other officers are suddenly surrounded by a dozen, two dozen, or more. You tell your officers to return to your vehicle, but as you start moving, the crowd moves and blocks your way.

So your choices are, bully your way through the crowd, risking physical injury to the crowd members and being accused of physically harming innocent protestors.

Or you could pull out your baton, and only use it on those that "get in your personal space." And you still find yourself being accused of physically harming innocent protestors.

As has been mentioned ad nauseum, the protestors in this case sat down; so there is a question as to why the campus police made the decision to pepper spray them. As I've repeatedly tried to point out, the only video we have starts at the point the pepper spray was used; we have no idea what led to the on-scene campus policeman's decision to use the less-than-lethal force. As I mentioned in a previous post in a previous thread, the more information that comes out, the more it appears to have been a bad decision. There's also the possibility that it was a perfectly valid decision according to the training provided to the policemen; but the responses by other policemen in other cities, that were much less confrontational, indicate a varied level of training and a varied level of "official response policy" throughout the nation.

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Your advocation of lethal force against non-lethal situations is extremely contradictory, and therefore confuses me (and probably a lot more people than just me) as to what you're ranting against. You've literally ranted against police brutality, yet you advocate using lethal force against those that are committing non-lethal acts.

I hope you understand the perception: You've basically advocated for a level of brutality that you've also advocated against. You rant against pepper spraying students, but you think we should execute petty thieves and curfew violators. The only difference one might make is that, in the case of USC Davis, the students weren't breaking any laws--but in other protest areas, where protestors have violated laws, and even attacked policemen with rocks and knives, do you think the policemen should have been justified in using lethal force as a response?

 

But that is not what happened. What did happen is the police used unnecessary force criminally. They were not surrounded, as in no way out, or threatened, but rather just went on a joy ride at others expense causing some to need medical treatment. Those involved should be fired and charged with a criminal offense,and those who did nothing to stop it should be written up and lose 1 months pay.