As a result of the recent incidents at UC Berkeley and UC Davis involving use of force by campus police against student protesters, UC President Mark Yudof has issued the below statement:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26702
In addition, UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake has also issued a statement.
http://www.uci.edu/features/2011/11/feature_drake_protests_111121.php
Of course, neither of the above gentlemen has ever had to deal with a group of protesters who refuse to follow lawful orders given by police. From their ivory towers, they expect that protesting students and community activists will simply do what the police tell them to do. UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi decided that her campus could not become another Zuccotti Park. She ordered her campus police to disperse the campers who had set up tents and were digging in for the long haul. She decided that was no way to operate a university. Thus, she gave orders to her cops. Now she is throwing the cops under the bus as many are demanding she resign.
So what were the cops to do? They order the people to disperse and the people refuse. Now what? In my view, that leaves two alternatives. They can attempt to separate the protesters (who are seated with arms linked) by physical force, which can only lead to injuries like separated shoulders and wrenched backs to both protesters and police, or they can resort to their batons. Which do you prefer? Or do you prefer pepper spray?
The videos of both incidents suggest to many that the officers may have used excessive force, but what about the entire scene-all around- for a period of minutes before the force started? That is what is not clear to me.
Here is a suggestion: The protesters should have followed the lawful orders of the cops. In recent years, I have participated in a few protests myself. Police were present, and we followed their orders to a tee-and were allowed to remain on the scene and make our statements. What is wrong with that? My second suggestion is that students who defied the officers' orders should be expelled.
The problem is that while our side (conservatives, tea partiers, pro-Israel, pro-America demonstrators) follow the law and the police commands, the other side does not. They want to provoke an incident. Many purposely want to get arrested like the one dopey UC Berkeley professor who demanded the police arrest her. What kind of role model is this for professors to be egging the students on?
Protests are a right of the people, but there have to be rules. You are not allowed to disturb the peace and disrupt the rights of others to utilize public space. Once the cops tell you to move or disperse, the intelligent thing to do is obey. If the cops are wrong, you can file a complaint after the fact. Deliberately putting the cops in a position where they have to use force to remove you is the tactic of anarchists, which many of these protesters clearly are. Keep in mind that these are not only students. There are community activists out there as well as professors.
It must be a thankless job being a campus cop. First, you have to answer to some dean. Next, you have to deal with a bunch of spoiled kids who think the world-and the university-owes something to them. Then when you are ordered by the chancellor to disperse people who won't disperse, everybody in the administration rushes to condemn you-even the ones who sent you to do the job in the first place.
Videos notwithstanding, let's don't rush to judgement on these officers' actions.
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12 comments:
Obviously Gary, you didn't read this:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2011/11/21/have-a-pepper-spraying-cop-thanksgiving/
If you had, you would have noticed that a retired police officer explained in no uncertain terms why spraying the pepper spray was counter-productive and totally uncalled for. He even said if an officer had done that in his presence, he would have tempted to kick the officer's butt for incompetence.
The retired officer didn't sound like a liberal either -- just a man with a head on his shoulders.
Yudof reminds me of Obama, when he was so quick to defend his Communist Professor friend at Harvard, after getting arrested for being disrespectful to a Cambridge officer. Of course, the beer summit took care of that issue. Maybe Yudof needs to have a beer summit with his Chancellors.
Squid
From what I have seen I cannot see how someone can make a legitimate argument that the Chancellor should resign. Unless she ordered the police to pepper spray the people or looked the other way when there were excessive force used in the past, she didn't do anything wrong.
I agree that the police were put in a bad spot here. I only have seen short segments of the video.
In one shot the officer walked over the students. Why couldn't the officers walk over to the encampment area and take the tents away and not deal with the students? It didn't look like the students were in the tents.
The kids at UC Davis are silly ingrates who likely know nothing about the real world. Most were probably just there for the beer and the "happening" (as they would say in the hippy days). That being said it looks awful bad for the "officer" to walk down the row maceing kids. Amusing to some extent no doubt. A foolish tactic by the police? It appears so.
I am amazed that anyone can defend this in-your-face spraying of 11 seated passive youngsters with pepper spray. those people who do have no moral compass. It's just plain uncalled for and wrong. The police officer should be fired and sued, as a brute and a sadist. Simple.
Anonymous,
What tactic should the police have used to get the students to leave and remove their encampment?
I think there would have been more violence and injury if they had tried to pry them apart. Police are as guilty as anyone else in judgement mistakes. It's best not to volunteer to test them. This may be the best educational experience for the Sex & Gender Studies majors in their whole college careers.
What were they protesting anyway, beyond free education paid for by someone, anyone, else? Maybe the beer and pot ought to be free too.
Miggie van Winkle must have gone to sleep in the early sixties and nobody has told him what time it was when he woke up. State universities haven't been tuition free since circa 1970. Room and board was never free. Tuition is still subsidized, that's why out-of-state students whose families don't pay taxes are charged full tuition. But its not free.
Squid, a friend of mine who plays the keyboard at his father's church, who has experience in both the public and private sector since getting his degree from Alabama State, kicked the incident with Dr. Gates around with me one Sunday afternoon. We concluded:
1) An officer who thought about what he was doing would have recognized that for any citizen to be asked in their own living room to show proof of identity is a demeaning experience, and would have courteously acknowledged this fact, regardless of the complexion of the individual. A really competent office might have even considered that an individual of African descent would have extra reason to be suspicious.
2) An individual being asked by a police officer to show ID would have acknowledged that, IF the officer were in fact talking to a slick burglar, and took his word for it that the burglar was the homeowner, when the homeowner returned, found all his expensive stuff missing, and learned that an officer had been there and left, the homeowner would have been outraged.
3) The real villain of the piece was the lady across the street who called the cops in the first place: she didn't even recognize her own neighbor at his own front door? What was SHE thinking?
Cabbie, as usual, has the most sensible and well-balanced commentary on the whole situation.
Siarlys,
I am reminded of Strom Thurmond's comment near the end of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings,
" I still don't know what Long John Silver's got to do with all this."
It baffles me how the people who are the most upset at the incident are calling for the Chancellor to resign without looking at more facts than a couple minutes of video.
While they are upset that the police acted as judge and jury and enforcer of punishment, they feel qualified to be judge, jury and force the Channcellor out without giving her or the police any rights of due process.
The activists and students are punch drunk with their new found voice. Instead of using their enhanced platform to be heard on why the students and activists were there to begin with and to use their voice to offer their resolution to their greivences, they are making demands that the Chancellor resign.
The same Chancellor who did not try to cover anything up. She said she would look into the details of the event the day of the event and then the next day called for a task force to investigate the incident.
The same chancellor who has said she will work towards seeing that this type of incident will not happen again on the campus.
I really do not see why she is the target of their rage. I can only guess that she symbolizes power and they want to attack someone they see as powerful who they think they have a chance to unseat? Is their real goal anarchy?
It is a gamble. If their demands are not met, they will look weak and it will be hard for them to claim victory - though I guess they put the encampment back up so that can their victory.
I still would be interested in hearing why the police didn't remove the tents from the encampment and leave the students and activists alone.
anon1, not the second anon on the thread.
I am done rambling.
Anonymous,
I have gone from defending the chancellor for ordering the encampment to be removed to criticism of her apology to the students. She has clearly lost control of her campus and it looks like the encampment remains.
It appears, Gary, that even though Squid is a charter member of your devoted fan club, you utterly missed his sly insinuation. I picked up on it. You may want to ask HIM what Obama's "Communist Professor friend at Harvard" getting arrested for "being disrespectful to a Cambridge officer" has to do with "Reactions to UC Davis Incident."
But since Squid's comment passed Comment Moderation, I considered it fair game to respond to. I'm not aware that Louis Henry Gates is, or ever has been, a communist, much less a Communist (formal party member -- is there a Communist Party any more, aside from a web site?), but it is obvious to anyone even half awake who Squid was talking about.
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