Guernica UC Davis, 11/18/11
The District Attorney of Yolo County announced today that no charges would be brought against former Lt. Pike of the UC Davis police or his fellow officers. In other words, in polite speak, the DA of Yolo County is a Yoho.
The University of California, Davis police officers who doused students and alumni with pepper spray during a campus protest last November won't face criminal charges, prosecutors said Wednesday...
the Yolo County District Attorney's office said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal...
the officers perceived they were dealing with a hostile mob and needed to spray the protesters to clear a path to safety.
You've all seen the video, but here it is again, with commentary. You can see for yourselves the incredible danger the police were in starting about 1:00 minute in.
Lt. Pike about to be ripped limb from limb by an angry mob
Does the people being sprayed look like a hostile mob? Even if there was a hostile mob surrounding them, how would spraying people sitting down in the grass aid in clearing a path to safety? Why not pepper spray the people who were allegedly blocking you from 'escaping' and open up a route to leave by? Why not behave rationally?
Of course this is the least of it. Police around the country routinely get away with murder, torture, sexual abuse, and fraud. True, there are a few police who are investigate for such wrongdoing, and of those a small number who are actually procsecuted, and of those a miniscule number who are actually convicted. (These last ones are the incidents we can link to.) But the very fact that we know of this very small number who do see consequences tells us --statistically, if not via common sense -- that for every beating or murder caught on tape there are multiple such travesties that never come to light.
John Pike thought he could get away with pepper-spraying mostly white students at a prestigious university sitting peacefully on the grass in broad daylight knowing that multiple videos were being taken. And he was proved pretty much correct.
What does the average policeman think he can get away with against African-American youth on the streets of a big city in the middle of the night with no one around to film?