By Kevin Foley
It wasn’t Kent State, but it was still appalling.
A group of peaceful students protesting tuition hikes at the University of California Davis were blasted at close range with pepper spray by campus police. This horrific, violent and unprovoked attack was caught by news cameras and scores of camera phones and mobile devices then instantly went viral.
Bear in mind, in the very first amendment in the United States Constitution we find our right to peaceably assemble is protected under the law. But what the world saw last Friday was reminiscent of how police violently deal with protesters in the Third World.
UC Davis police claimed they felt threatened by the crowd, but looking at the video shot by a local news crew, one sees only a bunch of heavily armed and helmeted cops poking batons at kids wielding cell phone cameras and iPads.
In an e-mail sent to students and faculty just hours after the police assault on the protesters, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi seemed to blame the victims: “We deeply regret that many of the protesters today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested.”
By Tuesday, Katehi was backpedaling as fast as she could as the public relations fallout over the scandal rocked the entire university system of California:
"We told the police to remove the tents or the equipment," Katehi declared. "We told them very specifically to do it peacefully, and if there were too many of them, not to do it, if the students were aggressive, not to do it. And then we told them we also do not want to have another Berkeley."
Well, she got another Berkley, except Katehi’s happened in the digital age so the evidence of her police officers’ abuse is irrefutable. Calls for her resignation are mounting. US Davis Professor Nathan Brown’s petition demanding her removal has collected 73,000 signatures.
“Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students,” Brown wrote in an open letter. “I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students.”
Chancellor Katehi’s fate remains unknown. So far, only UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza and the two officers who pepper sprayed the protesters have been held to account. They’ve been placed on paid administrative leave.
Predictably, the far right media went into mitigation overdrive. Conservative blogger Jim Hoft said spraying the students was, “How to shut down a row of screeching libs in 4 easy swoops.” Fox’s Jim Starnes asked what should be done about “domestic terrorists” on college campuses. Pepper spray is just a “food product” Megyn Kelly told Bill O’Reilly.
I carry pepper spray when I hike in Montana in case I’m attacked by a grizzly bear. It is an awful weapon, especially when used on humans. Maybe Megyn should sample some on the air, perhaps as a salad dressing.
I’d pay to see that.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |