The UC Davis pepper spray incident occurred on November 18, 2011, during an Occupy movement demonstration at the University of California, Davis. After asking the protesters to leave several times, university police pepper sprayed a group of student demonstrators as they were seated on a paved path in the campus quad. The video of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying demonstrators spread around the world as a viral video and the photograph became an Internet meme.O'Brien, C. (November 23, 2011). O'Brien: How one student's pepper spray photo became an Internet meme. San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved December 6, 2011. Officer Alex Lee also pepper sprayed demonstrators at Pike's direction.
Pike was subsequently fired, despite a recommendation that he face disciplinary action but be kept on the job. As of August 2014, Alex Lee was no longer listed in a state salary-database as working at UC Davis. In October 2013, a judge ruled that Pike should be paid $38,000 in worker's compensation benefits, for "[the] suffering he experienced after the incident." Apart from the worker's compensation award, he retained his retirement credits. The three dozen student demonstrators, meanwhile, were collectively awarded $1 million by UC Davis in a settlement from a federal lawsuit, with each pepper sprayed student receiving $30,000 individually.
After the incident, large protests against the use of pepper spray occurred on campus. UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi apologized to the students, saying that the police had acted against her orders for there to be no arrests and no use of force. A public debate about the militarization of police and the appropriate use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters took place in the media, with questions raised about the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Synopsis
On 18 November 2011, campus police officer Lt. John Pike pepper sprayed nonviolent demonstrators at UC Davis. The demonstrations were primarily in response to tuition hikes at the university, and more broadly aligned with the Occupy movement. The specific triggering event for the incident was the refusal of the demonstrators to comply with an order to remove their encampment.
According to The New York Times, multiple videos show a peaceful demonstration with officers "freely moving about"."Annette Spicuzza, the U.C. Davis police chief, told The Sacramento Bee that the officers used pepper spray on Friday because the police were surrounded by students. 'There was no way out of that circle,' she told the newspaper. 'They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation.' The videos show officers "freely moving about" and students behaving peacefully. The university reported no instances of violence by any protesters." : from "U.C. Davis to Investigate Use of Pepper Spray at Protest" by Brian Stelter, The New York Times, 20 November 2011 According to U.C. Davis police chief Annette Spicuzza, the protesters had surrounded the officers and would not let them leave.
Following the incident, the campus police chief and two officers were placed on administrative leave. UC Davis student and faculty organizations called for the resignation of Linda Katehi, chancellor of UC Davis. Katehi requested an inquiry into the incident and, in response, Mark Yudof, president of the University of California system appointed a task force to investigate the incident. The task force was composed of students, faculty, staff, and members from the UC community and led by former California Supreme Court Justice and UC Davis Professor Emeritus of Law, Cruz Reynoso.UC "President announces task force members" The California Aggie, 5 December 2011
President Yudof also contracted Kroll Inc. and its chairman, former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, to conduct the factual investigation and a review of police procedures for the task force. The Davis Division of the UC Academic Senate (the faculty of the University of California) conducted their own, separate investigation concurrently as well. Personnel in the Yolo County district attorney's office and Yolo County sheriff's department also reviewed the pepper spray incident to determine whether there was any "criminal conduct". Finally, President Yudof instructed Christopher Edley, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, and Charles Robinson, general counsel for the University of California, to conduct a separate review of protocols concerning non-violent protests at all ten UC campuses.
Alleged use of excessive force by police against students and demonstrators was said to be part of a larger pattern observed within the state of California and across the United States. The board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations said that "police violence" was used against non-violent demonstrators at UC Davis, UCLA, UC Berkeley and at a Cal State Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York's 8th congressional district and ranking member of the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, sent a letter to United States Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that the United States Department of Justice investigate the actions of law enforcement during the nationwide Occupy protests to determine if the civil liberties of demonstrators and reporters were violated. According to Nadler, Occupy UC Davis was one of at least eight separate events recorded on video at Occupy demonstrations throughout the United States where "significant and unwarranted force in making arrests" occurred.
As of March 2012, Occupy UC Davis continued to engage in organized meetings, events, and UC Davis-specific actions, in addition to joining actions of allied occupations such as those of Oakland, UC Berkeley, and Woodland.
On July 31, 2012, a UC Davis spokesman announced that Pike was no longer employed by the university."Officer at center of pepper-spraying incident no longer works at UC Davis", The Sacramento Bee, August 1, 2012 Nearly a year later, on July 27, 2013, it was reported that Pike had filed for workers compensation, and hoped to receive a monetary award for what he termed a "psychiatric injury" due to threats he received after his identity was made public. A settlement conference was scheduled for August 13, 2013. In October 2013, it was reported that Joel Harter, an administrative law judge for the California Division of Workers' Compensation, had approved a settlement totaling $38,056 for Pike. Apart from the settlement, Pike also retained his retirement credits earned from his employment by the University of California.
The school spent considerable funds (upwards of $175,000) to kill off traces of the incident on the internet.
Background In 2009, the University of California Regents approved a 32% (compounded for the year) tuition hike for the 2009–2010 school year. The following years saw several large protests and actions across California in response to tuition hikes and other complaints against the UC administration, including 52 arrested on November 19, 2009 and an attempt to block the local interstate on March 4, 2010. During February 2010, a communique titled "After the Fall: COMMUNIQUÉS FROM OCCUPIED CALIFORNIA" was published that analyzed and summarized an autumn of radical action in terms that resonated with the later Occupy Wall Street movement/tactic."Back to Mrak", (in reference to Mrak Hall in UC Davis), Communiqués from Occupied California, February 2010
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began on September 17, 2011, in New York City's Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district with protests focused on social and economic inequality, high unemployment, greed, as well as corruption, and the undue influence of corporations—particularly that of the financial services sector—on government. The protesters' slogan, We are the 99%, refers to the growing difference in wealth in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. The protests grew into a worldwide movement known as the Occupy movement and make use of a variety of civil disobedience tactics. Occupy Cal grew out of this movement as a series of protests at UC Berkeley.
A major theme of the Occupy demonstrations at California public universities was the role of education in creating jobs and improving the quality of life of society and the contrasting failure of the UC Regents and the State of California to honor commitments made in the California Master Plan for Higher Education. 81% tuition increases for students, mandatory furloughs (including for professors), firings of lower-ranking workers (especially those working directly with students), and well-publicized raises for the highest paid administrators have further fueled discontent both within the University of California system (of which UC Davis is a part) and within the California State University system, which has also seen large tuition raises and consequent protests.
Occupy UC Davis (distinguished from the off-campus Occupy DavisOccupy Davis – Davis Wiki) was a name used to refer to those responding to University of California police violence (specifically at Occupy Cal on November 9, 2011), and later grew to encompass other themes. Occupy Davis demonstrators occupied the city's Central Park in mid-October. On November 9, 2011 students and professors at UC Berkeley began with a series of teach-ins around campus, a noon rally, and a march. The event attracted approximately 1,500 demonstrators. Midday, protestors set up seven tents to symbolize their support for the Occupy movement. In response, law enforcement officials from UC Berkeley Police, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and other UC Police officers, arrived in riot gear to remove the seven tents from the protest site.
Video footage of the afternoon confrontation showed police beating protesters with batons and dragging two protesters by the hair, one of whom was UC Berkeley English professor Celeste Langan. Thirty-nine protesters, including Langan, were arrested for charges including "resisting and delaying a police officer in the performance of their duties, and failure to disperse when given a dispersal order."
The ACLU expressed "grave concerns" about the use of batons on protesters. The UC Student Association released a statement saying "UC Students are outraged by the brutal tactics used by the UCPD against students." In response to the police brutality and other perceived failings of UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau and the UC Regents, the Occupy Cal General Assembly called for a general UC strike on November 15, 2011. Other student groups from around the state announced plans to join in the protest. On November 11, the UC Davis Faculty Association also voted to endorse the November 15 systemwide strike.Davis Faculty Association Endorses Occupy Cal’s Call for Strike University Professor Bob Ostertag echoed these sentiments in a public letter about the earlier events at UC Berkeley:Bob Ostertag. Militarization of Campus Police, Huffington Post
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau thus joins the likes of Bull Connor, the notorious segregationist and architect of the violent repression of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, as some of the very few people who view the non-violent tactics of Martin Luther King as violent.
The faculty of the UC Davis Department of English published a statement calling for "the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community."Department of English accessed November 22, 2011
Occupy UC Davis Rallies and encampment