Seraph wrote:Seth wrote:to cover his ass against leftist outrage doesn't mean that the previous orders under which the police were operating were invalid.
He? The Chancellor is Linda Katehi, and neither she nor anyone else ordered the police to use pepper spray on people sitting on the footpath.
Sorry, "she." And it's clear that the police were under orders to remove the protesters:
UPDATE: Nov. 19, 11:55 a.m. -- Claudia Morain, a UC Davis spokesperson, told The Huffington Post that there were 35 police officers on the scene, 50 occupiers and 200 bystanders.
She said that UC Davis officials had warned the occupiers that they could not set up a tent city. They were given notice that they had to clear out their tents by 3 p.m. on Friday. Some complied. Others did not.
"I can't speak for the thought process for the officer," Morain noted about the use of pepper spray. She said that the officers were essentially trapped (the videos suggest otherwise) and had to transport several of the arrested students. "The pepper spray was used because they needed to get out of there," she said, emphasizing that the students were repeatedly warned before the spray was deployed.
Morain admitted that she had not thoroughly studied the videos of the incident.
But she said, "We are just not going to allow a tent city. Just period. In these budget times, we shouldn't use resources that should be going to our core academic mission going to a tent city."
Nine students and one nonstudent were arrested. "The police tried to use the least force that they could," Morain explained.
The individual who applied the spray was, according to one report, a lieutenant. Being a lieutenant, he was likely in command of the police on the scene and made the command decision to use pepper spray, which is a common tactic used by police against protesters. So yes, "orders" were evidently given by a person in command authority pursuant (presumably, in the absence of other evidence to the contrary) to the department's standing policies and procedures on handling campus protests. If the Lieutenant violated those policies, the investigation ordered by the university will reveal that.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
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