<p>If a police officer is permitted to pepper spray someone who is sitting down on the ground, with his arms linked with others so he is obviously making no threatening move, then when can a police officer not pepper spray someone? Is sending people to the emergency room the proper police response to students just sitting there? Have we come to that? Why didn’t they just arrest the students?</p>
<p>Let’s put it another way. What legitimate law-enforcement goal was the pepper-spraying in aid of? Why would pepper-spraying, rather than a less violent means, be the right way to achieve that goal?</p>
<p>I’m not a lawyer, but it doesn’t seem to me it takes a lawyer to understand that if limits can be placed on how people assemble then it is a court of law or other legal process which determines whether or not that right has been violated. </p>
<p>I see all sorts of news about cities clearing out their parks, and here in LA the mayor is saying the people need to move off of the City Hall lawn. Of course, I don’t expect they plan to direct the cops to use assault and battery to do it. But if they get the police to move people, or arrest people is that clearly illegal, merely because of the wording of the First Amendment? I don’t think so. Can I get a group and assemble on the floor of Congress, or in the Supreme Court Chambers? Can we assemble in some professor’s office, or behind the counter at the DMV? Can we block the road so ambulances and firetrucks can’t get by? Aren’t those public places? And why do people have to get permits for marches?</p>
<p>I understand that police are arms of government and thus have first amendment restrictions on their activities when dealing with protest. I also happen to believe that the actions in Davis look pretty bad - they look like battery to me, and are obviously pretty stupid since college campuses are the one place one should expect protest.</p>
<p>My main reason for posting in the first place was just my opinion, (or my observation since I don’t really have a legal education) that every limit of or police action in response to a protest is not an obvious violation of the Bill of Rights. That’s it.</p>
<p>You can assemble on a public space if you do not block traffic or cause damage. It is my understanding that a permit is not necessary. Sidewalks and parks are most common.</p>
<p>It seems to me that we have two different issues here. The thread is about whether the pepper-spraying of nonviolent students was justified. This is orthogonal to whether one supports Occupy. Someone can abhor Occupy but still believe that the Davis police used excessive force.</p>
I’m 54. I would say I’m ambivalent about OWS, but I think that would imply a higher level of interest than I have. I felt the same about the Tea Party. OWS was a little more annoying because they forced the closure of the street in front of my place of employment, but I still don’t really care one way or the other.</p>
<p>I think the Davis thing looks pretty bad from what I have seen.</p>
<h1>88 - right Cardinal Fang. But it is interesting what the young people are posting… at least to me.</h1>
<p>Bovertine: I don’t want to make the thread too political. If you google “NY OWS court cases” you will see what is happening there regarding what people are legally allowed to do. Apologies if you already are following the court cases in NY.</p>
As I said, I’m not really that interested. I’m sure I’ll read all about it in the news as various legal decisions come out. The fact that court cases even exist suggests to me it’s not 100% clear-cut.</p>
<p>I strongly encourage people to read the analysis assembled by Atlantic Monthly writer James Fallows at [James</a> Fallows - Authors - The Atlantic](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/]James”>All Stories by James Fallows - The Atlantic). Among many interesting points and additional videos (including one which shows the run-up to the pepper spraying, and another showing the chancellor’s walk to her car past silent students), there are links to the 9th Circuit decision on acceptable use of pepper spray. The UC Davis police were in no way, shape or form following those rules.</p>
<p>Given that the police chief originally told a bald faced lie by claiming that the pepper spray was used on protestors who had encircled police officers, and that the officers needed to get out of that encirclement, it seems that even the police chief recognized that blithely walking up and down spraying people sitting on the ground – who weren’t blocking anybody – isn’t an appropriate course of action. Especially on a campus, no matter how many people here try to claim that any kind of police action against someone sitting on a sidewalk campus without a permit is AOK.</p>
<p>Police aren’t supposed to administer punishment. They aren’t supposed to act as judge, jury, and executioner (in the sense of carrying out the penalty). That’s what was going on here; it clearly wasn’t necessary, and it clearly didn’t even work to make people leave. (Were they too lazy to drag them away? It seems so.) I think there are people posting here who would refuse to criticize <em>anything</em> the police did to injure these students, simply because they dislike OWS and think anyone supporting it is an “idiot” who apparently shouldn’t even be allowed to protest at all. What would it take for those posters to criticize the police in this situation? Tasering the students as they sat there? Shooting them in the face with rubber bullets or tear gas canisters, as happened to that veteran protesting in Oakland? It’s hard for me to imagine where such people draw the line. (And, by the way, it seems fairly obvious to me that the most gung ho supporters of police violence here tend to be posters – usually male – in their 20’s, who don’t have children. Rather than parents, who are usually, but certainly not always, a little more empathetic, and a little less dogmatic and cold, about things like this.)</p>
<p><a href=“Were%20they%20too%20lazy%20to%20drag%20them%20away?%20It%20seems%20so.”>quote</a> I think there are people posting here who would refuse to criticize <em>anything</em> the police did to injure these students, simply because they dislike OWS and think anyone supporting it is an “idiot” who apparently shouldn’t even be allowed to protest at all. What would it take for those posters to criticize the police in this situation? Tasering the students as they sat there? Shooting them in the face with rubber bullets or tear gas canisters, as happened to that veteran protesting in Oakland? It’s hard for me to imagine where such people draw the line. (And, by the way, it seems fairly obvious to me that the most gung ho supporters of police violence here tend to be posters – usually male – in their 20’s, who don’t have children. Rather than parents, who are usually, but certainly not always, a little more empathetic, and a little less dogmatic and cold, about things like this.)
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<p>Or maybe you could read what us “20 year olds males who dont have children” actually quote and link to. I have already quoted two or three times police officials who have said that pepper spray is an appropriate, and in these situations preferred, method of handling individuals. </p>
<p>But you’d rather wait for the police to get hit, possibly injured or killed, before they take action.</p>
<p>I don’t care what they are protesting about. I have no stance against or for the Occupy protests.</p>