Wow, like Florida is the only state in the country that has a couple of bad neighborhoods so you must declare the whole state to be dangerous? Paranoid much?

Wow, just spent 2 years living and working in Florida, don't know where you were, but the only knives I saw were in tackle boxes on the pier.
I walked my dog, alone at night without a single problem....
Now, my oldest went to school at WPI in Worcester, Mass. one of the most violent cities on the east coast.
Perception, or maybe, location?

right wing loonies declare pepper spray food, and pizza vegetable all in a span of about a week. these people being allowed to open their mouths is both a tribute and an insult to the first amendment.

We should also pepper spray that cop and see how that @!$%# likes it. Damn cops have too much power.

Wow, I applaud the protestors for just sitting there and taking it. Depending on whether or not the officer was just following orders, I hope his commander or him never find a job again.

To be fair, that police officer has been pepper sprayed with the same level of spray, as all officers are, during training. This way, they know the extent of temporary discomfort it may cause. As for the facts of the incident (I'm in the law school at UC Davis), apparently the Chancellor did not order any violence or arrests (according to her), but the use of force was likely authorized by the officer's superior. There is a 30 day investigation into the matter.

The use of force against a row of people sitting quietly with their heads down is inexcusable. The fact that the officer was sprayed in training does not make it ok to spray the protesters.

How do you know to what extent officers are sprayed in training? That was like a garden hose spray of those students, and I seriously doubt officers are sprayed like that in training.

The cops in this country are out of control. They cannot be respected, they must not be trusted, and they should not be tolerated. They need to go to jail for 20 years without parole for abusing their power in a cell next to politicians who take bribes and the lobbyists who bribe them.

We've had ENOUGH of all this crazy crap.

How about we spray her with that on live TV? I wonder how dismissive she would be then. How ignorant.

I think we should be allowed to beat Megyn Kelly with a frozen cucumber. I mean, that's a food product too. How much harm could that cause?

This is not the first time that Megyn Kelly has spewed nonsensical stupidities.

She's a regular in Club 'I fit the stereotype of a ditzy blonde'.

No. Serve Megyn Kelly some scrambled eggs. Spray them with pepper spray and let her eat breakfast.

Of 10 students arrested, 9 were pepper sprayed. The only student to be arrested and not sprayed was arrested before the spray (which prompted the circle that the officers were breaking up). The student that was arrested before the spray now claims to have suffered "radial nerve damage" in one of his hands. All of the students who had been pepper sprayed are perfectly fine today. It seems clear that the physical force needed to arrest these particular individuals without pepper spray would have been more conducive to physical injury than attempting to arrest them without the use of compliance techniques, such as pepper spray; this is why pepper spray is used: to reduce the likelihood of physical injury in necessary police work.

I don't want this to be misconstrued as "approving" of what happened; it's simply an observation based on the facts of this particular situation.

Using pepper spray against, non violent people, who are exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, is unwarranted. Again, I refer to the "Continuum of Force",as taught throughout the country!?

Furthermore; "Congress shall make no law...abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble"...First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States. I would attest, you are interpreting the facts of this particular situation, incorrectly. Two of the police officers were suspended, the Chancellor of the University is being asked to step down and has admitted the action of the police was unwarranted and there may be litigation to follow.

Party Of Logic and Reason, your analysis assumes the officers had a just reason to make those arrests.

Once the police were called in, the students were subject to the unconstitutional denial of their right to peaceably assemble and possible arrest. When the police order you to do something and you do not...they can choose their next action, which can be batons, a simple arrest, pepper spray, etc. Refusing them can lead to further charges, as well as, being knocked to the ground, kicked, etc., so peaceful non-compliance is the chosen response, if you wish to stand on your conviction, that you are being arrested unconstitutionally. Police have chosen different responses, all over the country. In this particular instance, they chose pepper spray, when confronted by peaceful non-compliance. There have been hundreds of protests, all over the country, where the police have chosen to do nothing?!

Just to clarify, a police officer's job is not the be "unbiased" as you seem to indicate. It is to enforce the law. These students were breaking the law and resisting arrest. Perhaps he, or the individual who ordered him to use this method of compliance, made a moral error in judgment. Is that what you refer to when you say "protect both sides with an unbiased view"? The moral side and the black letter of the law side? Or did you mean something along the lines of protestors and the law...because that view is incoherent.

delat470, if you think you can be a better police officer, go be one. From what you write, you have no clue what the job and responsibilities of police officer are. Police officer are to protec the peace, but mostly to enforce the law and they have to make Utilitarian decisions - what will protect the most people. The protesters were a small group infringing on the rights of a larger group,

Jim... Sometimes cops are just bullies and I'm guessing that this guy is a power tripping bully in the very height of his glory. They were a small group sitting on the ground..they were a danger to no one and were expressing a legal right to protest. The cops were totally in the wrong in this case as no one was in danger and no one needed to be protected. You must a black and white type of person..believe it or not but there are a whole lot of grey areas where the absolute law does not fit. Law and justice are not always the same thing and law is not always on the side of the right, sometimes the law must be broken to change things that must be changed.

"The protesters were a small group infringing on the rights of a larger group,"

That's what I've been saying about Selma for all these years. Good thinking Jimbo.

"Just to clarify, a police officer's job is not the be "unbiased" as you seem to indicate. It is to enforce the law."

Same logic as in 1930's Germany?

So when the right to assemble is denied ...anything goes. The Constitution's right to assembly is meaningless if someone has a law confronting it.

And we school other countries on how to be a democracy.

Try and find an extended version of the video. The crowd of students that witnessed it did come to their defense, and formed a mob around the police officers and forced them to back out of the park immediately after the pepper spray incident (shouting things like, "Shame on you"). You are absolutely correct, it escalated the situation from a peaceful protest to an angry mob and that was certainly an error on the part of the police.

I watched the extended version but didn't see what you describe. The police escalated the situation, not the students, who were peacefully assembled and continued to peacefully assemble, while chanting "shame on you", in unison but without any overt, aggressive behavior. You lose the thrust of your entire argument against the protesters, who were originally protesting peacefully but were pepper sprayed. According to your logic, the police should have pepper sprayed the "angry mob", who were behaving in a more dangerous way than the original circle of protesters? In the first case, the police felt justified, while in the second case, they were afraid and wisely, diffused the situation by withdrawing. According to your view, students assembled chanting "shame on you", constitutes and "angry mob". I would attest, police using pepper spray against peaceful protesters was an act of "undue force".

If everyone just goes to class and goes to work and carries on as if everything is fine then the masters win without any protest at all. That is not the way of a free people, when we see things that threaten our way of life we are obligated by the love of freedom to stand against it. If the first Americans had just gone to work and class we would still be British.

gdvegas

Are you aware that the average student is scheduled to be in class 12-15 hours per week? Do you really believe it was the students' fault that they were sprayed because they did not avoid police officers who have no clue how to do their jobs properly? Is "blame the victim" all you got? ..... you must be a Faux News Fan.

Skogkatter, you have no clue what Nazi Germany was like; you do not even know how to spell it, a sure indictment of the education system. Look at Egypt and Tahrir Square if you want to see what real government violence against protesters is like. I saw video of some Occupiers chanting: "What does a police state look like?" "This is what a police state looks like." Let's fly them all to North Korea and see if it improves their opinion of America.

Jim..we are closer to that than you believe. If things continue as they are I greatly fear we will have a full and bloody revolution on our hands. That is a very bad answer to our problems, somehow we must find common grouind or we will no longer be the United States, just the states. Another wide spread civil war may take this country in a direction that no one really wants to see and there won't really be a winner if we tear ourselves apart. Spelling be hanged, I saw the beginning of the same things that Skogkatter saw and SHAME was my reaction also.

Jim 87.....

Our measure of what is right or wrong doesn't come from a comparison to Tahir Square, North Korea, Nazi Germany or any other place ...... it comes from the United States Constitution and our history of both successes and failures in upholding the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make with your comment, but I am not sure you know your point either.

Thank you Jim A. Exactly my sentiments. And what I am hearing from the OWS opposition such as Newt Gingrich is another case of deja vu for me. Belittling the occupiers, calling into question their motives, calling them lazy and dirty, calling for them to precisely articulate their "demands" as though they have legislation already written and ready to present, reminds me exactly of the initial establishment response to the protests of the 60's and 70's for equal rights and against the war. People will laugh at them and ignore them at our peril. The OWS movement is a symptom of a system rigged against its own citizens and the fact that people have figured that out.

Not only is it a growing movement, but there is a much wider population supporting it than in the 60's and 70's. VietNam was a student protest and although it took years it was extremely effective. OWS seems to cross all boarders of age and race and just be an American movement. In this case Power to the People seems to mean most of us not just the few of us who marched back then. I'm glad to see the American spirit has not died..I was beginning to think it had.

Oppression always starts somewhere and not usually with full bloody violence. Should we wait until they use real bullets before we complain? Human right are at stake here, if the banks, and the insurance companies and all the other masters win, we will be a beaten down and enslaved country, we are well on our way to that already. It is never wise to wait until the situation is completely out of hand before protesting, we need to do it now and keep people aware of what is happening in our streets.

I guess you don't remember what happened at Kent State University and Jackson State University in the sixties, during the protests against the Viet Nam War. Do you remember President Nixon ordering full scale bombing of Cambodia without the approval of Congress?

Maybe it's not the weapon,many people, myself included, carry pepper spray. Maybe it's who they chose to use it on and the reason it is applied. Many people annoy me or even get in my way sometimes..I've never used my spray on them because being annoyed is not the same as being endangered. See the difference? These protesters were not endangering anyone.

jim - marshmallow guns would be short-lived, the dental association would protest them

crone - if they used the simple pepper spray container that is available to the public, id say eh maybe a little excessive but whatever suck it up if you have any conviction. But the use of the fire hose sprayer was a bit much, pepper spray does hurt and gets the point across, this was just foolishness and i won't support OWS until they decide to march on congress and attack left and right alike.

Jim

It's real simple. ANY use of force is excessive when it is unnecessary.