<p>That was my point. Some amount was due, but $30 k per student? No permanent injury. No high medical bills. No lost wages. A small amount of eye irritation.</p>
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<p>They required a task force to figure that out? </p>
<p>For a cuppa Joe at Peets, I could easily point out where the University leadership makes poor decisions each and every day, 24/7. :D</p>
<p>Really? You yourself feel knowledgeable enough to know all the university/police regulations, what every person involved was doing, what they knew and when they knew it?</p>
<p>Omniscient much?</p>
<p>I bet if you went down to your local college, you would find tons of students that would volunteer to be sprayed with pepper spray for $30K</p>
<p>If only I were one of the students sprayed…</p>
<p>If my kid or I got 30K for some police pepper spray, we’d keep the money, no apologies, guilt or giving it to charity.</p>
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Even if other parts of the video showed something different, that scene alone was worth (in my opinion) about $100,000 each from a jury. You can go back and forth all you want about it, but the university counsel probably made the same estimate I did.</p>
<p>This assumes that one can “estimate” the potential awards doled out by a jury, and estimate the business, ethical, and judicial acumen of such a group. It could indeed have reached to an even more distasteful benefit to the protesters. However, it does not take a Rhodes scholar to figure out the protracted cost of litigating this sordid affair and fend off the legal barracudas who have “helped” those poor lost souls would have been a multiple of the bill discussed today. </p>
<p>This settlement is not about justice nor about civil rights violations. And neither does it give the violators absolution. It is nothing else than yet another parody of justice as the parties get what they want. The legal pirates walk away with several thousands dollars and the university cut its losses. </p>
<p>And this all comes back to the role of public servants in our country. The mostly overpaid, lazy, omnipotent, and over-reaching have struck again by failing to do their job CORRECTLY. What is the image to remember here? A poorly prepared and trained police force? Administrators who were lax in dealing with the Occupy cancer in a proactive manner (read much earlier in the days, and especially in the morning when those parasites and protesters sleep) and then need a task force and a private company such as Kroll to point towards their ineptitude. One might deride the comment made by Bluebayou regarding the Coppa Joe, but it rings true to anyone who takes a closer look at your public dollars at work. </p>
<p>Did the university have an excuse in Davis? Not really as the despicable scene at other UC schools such as Berkeley should have given them an early and clear idea of what could happen when you allow degenerates to take a campus over all the while … waiting for a violent escalation. </p>
<p>In the end, except for a few profiteers, there are no winners here. The public servants have again demonstrated how inept and ill-prepared their sinecures of a job has made them, and how easy it is to kick the can down the road and make the taxpayers foot the bill for their lack of performance, dedication, and perhaps simple decency. </p>
<p>No matter how one slices it, public servants are failing us every day, and we condone that behavior by our lack of interest. We have let our government become lazy and complacent because we don’t care!</p>
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This is what litigators have to do every day, based on their experience. It is something of an art, but you have to do it.</p>
<p>As for winners–perhaps there will be some people who won’t be pepper-sprayed when they shouldn’t be in the future.</p>
<p>^ right…as hopefully some may have learned to move when warned more than once.</p>
<p>…but some will always see a situation like this as the students being just innocent victims. I prefer to call them idiots.</p>
<p>You can call them idiots. Doesn’t change the fact that police violated a lot of laws in this case, and the idiot students were rewarded. Which actually makes me think, who’s the idiot here?</p>
<p>^ lots of idiots to go around…saddens me though the many believe disobedience of the law deserves to be rewarded. As I stated before, I would hope that the parents would be insisting their kids give the money to charity…I know I would. I don’t believe people should get money not earned, but that’s just me I guess.</p>
<p>Hunt, we are closer than it appears on first blush, as I would’ve said $75K settlement value except I read they made a dedicated attorney fee payout, hence the $30K (40% discount). But my figures are definitely local–I don’t know a thing about value in California.</p>
<p>“saddens me though the many believe disobedience of the law deserves to be rewarded”</p>
<p>Saddens more more that the police – supposed adults in this case – do illegal stuff in the first place – stuff that warrants rewards. </p>
<p>Using this logic, everything is stupid in this case: laws, police, lawyers, the court system, litigation, etc. </p>
<p>But if cops behaved in a reasonable manner to begin with, we wouldn’t be even have this discussion.</p>
<p>After all, it’s not like campus police aren’t experienced in campus protests, for chripes sake. Ever hear of the free speech movement? Vietnam rallies? Anti apartheid demonstrations? Campus protests in every case. </p>
<p>Universities and campus police really should know better, and will be on the losing end of this kind of litigation until they actually do.</p>
<p>^believe what you want…did you watch the entire video?..I did</p>
<p>you keep saying if the cops behaved reasonable…but it was the students who kept blocking the cops from leaving after 3 warnings to move…It was the students actions that started this fiasco…that is undeniable,</p>
<p>geeps, why do you think it was settled so quickly? Because the university didn’t want the case to end up in court. Because, no matter what YOU believe, adults don’t like to see adults do stupid things to kids. A jury in the case would be likely think that while the kids did the provoking, IT WAS THE COP WHO BROKE THE LAW. Welcome to a jury award far greater than the current one. </p>
<p>In any way, I’m done discussing this: won’t change your mind, you won’t change mine. To the kiddos at UC Davis, I say, enjoy your money 
:)</p>
<p>you mean enjoy the taxpayers money…enjoy the hand out, so well deserved, lots of hard work went into getting that $30k. The way they just sat there must have been a real pain. Being warned to move 3 times and not getting up must have been agonizing.</p>
<p>I hope the parents have enough of a moral compass to insist that their little sweeties give it up to some good charities, but I won’t hold my breath. .and this “kids” are adults by the way.</p>
<p>Protestors take certain risks when they protest non-violently–for example, they risk being arrested and prosecuted. In America, however, they are not supposed to be taking the risk of being violently attacked by police–at least, not since the days of Bull Conner. The police here took a big (and stupid) risk, and their employers ended up paying for it. It’s too bad that the taxpayers are their employers, but that’s where incentives come from.</p>
<p>For those of you who think the protestors got what was coming to them when they were pepper-sprayed–well, the legal system would not have agreed, which is why the state settled.</p>
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<p>You simply do not know if the legal system would have agreed. This settlement does not vindicate the protester’s action. It only is a testament to the twisted legal system that rewards whimsical lawsuits filed against deep-pocketed targets. It is a victory for the ambulance chasers, the mercenary consultants, and that joke of a task force. It is a loss for the taxpayers and the upcoming classes of students who will, without a doubt, make up for the shortfall in the UC coffers through even higher tuition. Rather than applaud those morons who have nothing better to do that sit in locked arms on a sidewalk, their “mates” should see them as the abject and clueless profiteers they are. </p>
<p>This is a travesty of justice.</p>
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<p>Check your calendar; the hippies and free speech movement are half a century ago. Until the advent of this senseless Occupy movement, there has been very little in opportunities to gain “experience”, and even if there were it is obvious that the police and other officials are poorly trained or equipped to deal with such situations with the required force that is warranted. Not to mention that the romantics and the PC crowd would not tolerate the right way to deal with the disobedients. </p>
<p>The biggest indictment in this case is that UC-Davis could have acted differently, and not with a softer approach. They should have precluded the camps to start in the first place, and suspend all the students who participated in the conflict with the police. </p>
<p>But it is good to remember who the people who are in charge are. Lazy and incompetent who are more worried about protecting their sinecures and fat pension than anything else.</p>