UC Davis Incident Shows Pepper Spray Becoming Weapon Of Choice Against Occupy Activists (updated)
Cops don't mind getting video recorded pepper spraying students


At 2:50, one cop can be seen smiling and chatting with a cameraman.

The interesting part is that despite all the cameras, one cop blatantly pepper sprays a group of sitting UC Davis students who apparently were refusing to move.

The incident took place Friday afternoon as police were breaking up an Occupy encampment.

One woman was rushed to the hospital with chemical burns.

The university chancellor said police were called in "to protect the health and safety of our campus community," according to her statement below.

The name of the officer spraying the students as if they were cornered roaches is Lt. John Pike, according to the following tweet:

@mtracey: Lieutenant John Pike pepper-sprayed UC Davis students today, phone number and email: 530-752-3989 japikeiii@ucdavis.edu #OWS

Ten people, including nine students, were arrested for defying the campus ban on camping.

It was only a little over a month ago where police using pepper spray on protesters had to be extremely coy about it, as Tony Baloney showed us.

But now police around the country are shamelessly pepper spraying anybody from an 84-year-old woman in Seattle to a woman appearing to be in her teens in Portland.

UPDATE: Here is another video providing a different angle.



Now there is a petition circulating demanding the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. I just signed it.

Also, UC Davis faculty member Nathan Brown is calling for the resignation of Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Katehi took the reigns of the university in 2009 under questionable circumstances because she was linked to an admissions scandal at the University of Illinois that favored students with political clout.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The difference in today’s news is that the episode appears to tie the university’s former provost, Linda P.B. Katehi, to the leg up given to the priest’s family friend. Ms. Katehi, formerly the engineering dean at Purdue University, supervised the admissions office as provost at Illinois but has insisted she was kept in the dark about the special treatment accorded certain applicants.

She was named in May as the new chancellor of the University of California at Davis and is scheduled to take office next month, but since the Tribune started its series of articles on the alleged admissions abuses, one California lawmaker has questioned her appointment. The University of California’s president, Mark G. Yudof, told the San Francisco Chronicle two weeks ago, however, that “I have 100-percent confidence in her.â€