Posted on 11/19/2011 2:52:50 PM PST by NetLiberty
A non-violent protest at UC Davis turned chaotic Friday afternoon as police pepper-sprayed a group of students sitting on the ground. Videos shot at the scene show a policeman walking up to the protesters, pulling out his can of pepper spray to display to the crowd, and liberally sweeping the protesters with the stinging substance. Many students had their heads down, but at least one demonstrator was hit in the face. Other officers then followed suit, spraying many of the Occupiers who appeared to be sitting in a circle with their arms linked. By midday Saturday, videos of the showdown were circulating the Internet.
SOURCE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
(Excerpt) Read more at newsfeed.time.com ...
"I understand how a circle works. But I don’t considered it “surround” and a “safety” issue when one can step over some folks sitting on the ground like the cop with the pepper spray did."
How do you know for a fact that they could simply "step over some folks" without one of the protestors doing something (grabbing a leg, attacking, etc.)? There was a cop who was slashed at yesterday, and another one whose eye was "flushed out" at a supposedly "peaceful" protest.
Have you been in situations where you are outnumbered by a hostile group? I have.
There is a way to remain in control of the situation. You just have to give each member of the group total certainty that you will inflict unacceptable levels of damage to the first person who makes a move. As a group, they may be confident they can take you. As individuals, nobody will want to be first.
By inflicting a minor level of pain on the group, the police reduced the probability that the crowd would do something that would NEED to be responded to with deadly force. They saved those idiots from potentially dying.
Here's something you really need to understand about police mindset. The cop intends to go home uninjured at the end of the shift, by whatever means necessary. THAT is his top priority. If the only way to accomplish that is to have a large pile of bullet-ridden bodies for other to deal with, then there WILL be a large pile of bullet-ridden bodies, despite anything that the political authorities have to say about it afterwards.
As it was the cops got routed by unarmed unaggressive pepper sprayed children.
I hope you are....you seem to be taking huge leaps to make your argument and so your argument does not hold up, IMHO.
Not trying to be a hard*ss....okay, I was at first. But these “occupiers” are like street performers trying to agitate (instead of entertain) so they can say “look, we were behaving, we were following our rights and look what these “pigs” did.”
At least one policeman was cut up enough to require emergency service at another occupiers site with these peaceful jackass*s. These “occupiers” were trying to start trouble and so they resisted lawful orders to disperse from public right-of-way.
“Don't cry for me, Argentina, (I mean)occupiers.... ” SaraJohnson, forgive me for sounding like a personal attack on you. It isn't. I've just had permanent crowns put in and it hurts like a son-of-a-gun. My face is swollen and a nerve seems to have been bruised or severed or something so I just have to cowgirl up until it heals or its off to surgery for me...arghhhhh... My apologies. Its mostly the pain "talking." Remember, when the dentist says you might have a little pinch of pain, have a bottle of Jameson ready. Ha! I still think these jerks (not the dentists!) are a sign of the worse to come. Better to head them off of the pass now.
And as long as they keep voting Democrat,they will get rising fees for Colleges,while the Law enforcement officers’s pay scales are protected.In the end,they will get just that-overzealous cops trying to defend a system that heavily bribes them to defend it.
Probably a mixture of frustration led to this action today and no college students are not always pleasant or peaceful and some them can get either violent or will deliberately start a fight.
At such this isn’t totally unexpected.Otherwise if this goes on,this will rip the left apart.
Your assumption is that the crowd would have responded better to your tactics. The crowd was being agitated to seek a conflict with the police.
Is this a harbinger of “Reistrack (sic) Fires?â€
Here's a video from another angle (long and boring). And I was mistaken - the cops were surrounded by the folks sitting in a circle (not just a line). And the group of kids blocking the cops are facing away from the cops. However, it seems the cops were able to move out of the circle easily. At 13:30 one cop takes a handcuffed girl off amidst fairly modest boos by the crowd.
In the guy's third video it shows the cops still surrounded, and one cop gives a couple of tugs on one of the guys on the sidewalk. Seems to me he didn't try too hard, and then the cop with the spray “steps over some folks” - then he sprays them. That is when the real ruckus starts.
In this guy's set of three videos there is a guy in tan pants and a white shirt that is roaming around and seems to be directing the kids. I think he was the one that directed the kids to get up and face away from the cops when they first set-up the circle. I suppose to show “non-violent resistance” and also to avoid a face full of spray. I hope he was one of those that got arrested and they find out what he is about. I imagine it is the typical small group of diehards that foment this stuff and use the students as cannon fodder.
Thanks for the link and comments.
On the third video at about 3:50 in, there is a guy who walks up to the seated protestors and pulls out a red bag with something in it- then he hands it to one (or some?) of the protestors. The cops make note of this, and a cop (facing the protestors) walks forward to take it away from the protestor, and he pulls at one of the protestors arms, but the protestor doesn’t give back whatever that object was.
After that, the cop who did the spraying steps over the protestors and starts the spraying.
So, it looks like whatever was handed to the guy (or the perception of a possible dangerous object), and the apparent hiding of that object is what caused the cops to take action, valid or not.
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFa5Kq4Rfo
wow, an utlra zot... I wonder what he did. I didn’t even notice Stronghand.... must have showed up later.
They were resisting by being there when told to vacate.
It wasn’t even pepper spray, it was a very diluted concoction apparently.
Of course in the old days, they'd have use night sticks or "asp" type batons. Today, they might use stun guns rather than pepper spray. But pepper spray is safer.
Good catch - and right before that a guy in black (with a white mask on maybe - that Guy Fookes thing or whatever it is called) also hands a black back to the seated folks in that same section before the red bag is opened.
Those few guys is also where the pepper spray started. You may be correct - the cops saw what they perceived as an escalation and countered it with what they determined to be reasonable force. The sad part is, very few people will see that (I didn’t) and the news will be that “cops spray peaceful protestors”. That plays right into the protestor’s hands - and the media eats it up.
I was hoping that these things would die down, but I think they are too organized for that to happen, and they know the tactics to increase the confrontations. I was also thinking that all of these videos can be used by the cops to review and better their tactics - such as getting surrounded in the first place. I still wonder why they didn’t just take the rest of the people that they had in cuffs out the way they did with the girl.
:-)
See how it works folks?
What makes you think they were trying to punish the squatters?
They were trying to get them to move.
My pleasure, S40!
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