Police Beat, Pepper-Spray Students at UC Berkeley

I woke up this morning to reports that police who were called in to disperse demonstrators on the UC Davis campus on November 18 sprayed pepper spray into the faces of University students who were sitting in protest on the campus quad. At least one student was hospitalized for chemical burns following the raid.

An assistant professor at the University, Nathan Brown, wrote an open letter to UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, demanding her resignation. Chancellor Davis, meanwhile, posted a response on the University web site that more or less placed the blame on the protesters. Her reasoning was that they had ignored her written request to remove their tents from the quad.

If those were the only facts of this case I might feel differently about this. I might believe the Chancellor was only acting to resolve what she thought could turn into a dangerous situation. After all, as she says in her response, it's her responsibility to protect the health and welfare of the students at US Davis.

The problem lies in what happened at UC Berkeley just days before. On November 9, police were brought in to disperse protesters on that campus as well. During their operation, several students and faculty were beaten, dragged by their hair, and pinned to the ground by several officers. One photo I've seen of that event shows five police officers in riot gear who appear to be kneeling on, punching, and kicking a student.

Chancellor Katehi, living a few thousand miles closer to that event than I do, could not have been unaware of what happened at UC Berkeley. And yet she still felt justified in ordering police to do the same thing, for pretty much the same reasons, on her campus. With that in mind, I have a much harder time believing the Chancellor was acting with the best interests of the students at heart.

After reading Assistant Professor Brown's and Chancellor Katehi's letters and reading some of the news accounts of the event, I felt that I needed to tell the Chancellor directly how I feel about things. Luckily, someone had posted a link to a page on the University web site that allows people to send messages directly to the Chancellor.

Here's what I sent:

Ms. Katehi,

I read with interest both your explanation of the horrible events that occurred when police assaulted a group of protesters on your campus, as well as the the open letter written by Asst. Prof. Brown. calling for your resignation.

I won't claim to fully understand all the details here. But I felt you should know, if you do not already, that this is an incident that now has national attention. I hope that you were sincere in your promise to investigate what went wrong on Friday.

As it stands now, your response seems to be an attempt to rationalize the actions of the police that places the blame for their brutality on the protesters. Taking that position will, I assure you, only serve to further anger those who are now following the news related to this event.

If the police were justified in the tactics they used to remove the protesters from your campus, then you will need to provide much more evidence of that. To be clear, I am asking for evidence beyond the fact that they ignored your written request to tear down their tents and go home.

I disagree with Asst. Prof. Brown that you should step down immediately. However, given that you were aware that a similar occurrence of police brutality had happened just days before during a similar action at UC Berkeley, I believe you have quite a challenge ahead of you if you wish to defend your decision. And if you cannot provide evidence that the police you ordered onto your campus were fully justified in what currently seems like an excessive use of force to remove the protesters, then I believe an apology and resignation of your position would be in order.

Sincerely,

paul shillinger
Hagerstown, MD