As some faculty members called for her ouster, the chancellor of University of California Davis launched an inquiry Saturday into the pepper-spraying of apparently peaceful Occupy Davis protesters by campus police.
A video of the Friday incident that went viral on the Web showed a police officer dousing the protesters with a canister of pepper spray as they sat huddled on the ground. The police had been attempting to clear the university's Quad of tents and campers.
Faculty and students reacted with outrage. Nathan Brown, an assistant professor of English, said in an interview that the episode was the latest example of "the systematic use by UC chancellors of police brutality" to suppress protests.
In an open letter, he wrote: "Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked."
Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi initially did not criticize the police, but she said Saturday that she had since watched the video and reviewed more accounts from the scene.
"It left me with a very bad feeling of what went on," Katehi said in a telephone interview. "There was enough information to show that we need to take a serious look at what happened."
She said she authorized police to remove the tents, but not to use the pepper spray in the manner shown on the video. "Absolutely not," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment