I disagree. Humans are not made of sugar.
Grabbing the protesters and attempting to disentangle them would still be using force, add a little twisting, either as a reaction to or part of that force, and injuries become likely. The purpose of pepper spray is to use force in a way unlikely to cause injury. That is the reason that it is used, it is the most humane deterrent, whether we are talking about bears or occupiers. We don’t know how it would have went down without the pepper spray, if they started wrestling, people could have started thrashing about and one of the cops could have gotten kicked and then reacted with much more force, escalating the situation greatly.
No, they don’t.
Wrestling a fighting, kicking, screaming person into a police vehicle certainly risks serious injury (in fact many people get neck, head etc injuries from it.) But we don’t actually know that any of that would have happened. The police may have been able to calmly separated them from one another one at a time and carried them off. If they had tried to separate them and they became violent/struggled, then that’s an appropriate time to use pepper spray.
So, we disagree on the method that the police should have used to remove the protesters from the sidewalk? I can live with that. I am no expert on this, I am just going by the fact that using pepper spray is a method that has come along as a response to confrontations and injuries, ect. And I know I would personally rather be pepper sprayed than have my arms and legs twisted by a bunch of gym rats, or be wrestled on concrete. Pepper spray might hurt like hell at the time, but the cure is water.
Pepper spray is pretty safe, in discussions about TASERs I’ve tried to find statistics on injuries through “normal” use of force, but have largely been unsuccessful. People seem to collect statistics and provide them a lot more readily for LTL weapons than they do for regular or traditional “police force.”
I’d say pepper spray is safer for compliance than violent subduing/wrestling, but just hauling someone off with 3-4 guys carrying them one at a time isn’t a violent subduing/wrestling situation. It might become one.
I do often mention pepper spray and TASERs are often used in place of billy clubs and fists which were used more in “old school” policing from the late 19th century until more modern times–and I’d much rather be pepper sprayed than hit with a night stick.
To me, the locking of arms implied that the protesters were going to resist being moved, especially considering that the point of them doing it was to block the police in, to prevent them from moving other people they had arrested.
Actually, looking at thisvideo you can see that there was an attempt to remove a protester by hand, which was resisted, just before the pepper spray was used.
These students weren’t camping so that rule does not apply. I doubt there is a rule on the campus of that school saying a student, if sitting outside on a bench or grass for too long, must be moved.
I would agree. If they had not established a long duration camp, they were not violating that general principle.
Many of the Occupy protests on the other hand, were clearly violating the integrity of local public spaces. So I have no problem, and in fact strongly support, the long standing tradition of not letting people establish permanent camps for their own use on public property.
It looks like this was begin to happen at Davis, and that the administrations biggest concerns were that the tents were attracting people with no affiliation to the University, and that with the weekend approaching this would turn into a party atmosphere, with drugs and alcohol.
Would you rather talk about the other Occupy protests or what actually happened?
I’m more of a responder in this thread, not an initiator, I’ll talk about whatever the thread is talking about. I didn’t start the discussion about land use policies and overnight camping on public land etc, that started back in post #27 and went on for a good time before I ever commented.
If the thread moves away from that topic, I will probably talk about something else.
I’ll note if you wanted to only talk about what happened at UC Davis, your response to post #27 should have been clarifying that in this case the students were not engaged in long term camping. Instead you responded by espousing this concept of yours that a private individual should be allowed to remain indefinitely in one place, setting up camp, on public land unless all three were true: a) they had stayed an unreasonable amount of time, b) they were using the land improperly and c) someone else wanted to use the land.
I was mostly reacting to that, noting that instead the standard used in our national forests and wilderness areas makes much more sense to me as it actively protects public land from being privatized by squatters and people who would be destructive to it in various ways.
I think you brought in the national forests and parks as a way to segue into what you think would support your argument. We’re talking about a college campus, site of many protests, kids sitting around, and generally being asses of themselves without police intervention.
The police’s actions in a possible national park scenario has nothing to do with what actually happened. If you wanted to talk about that, you should, but know that is a debate I won’t participate in. In my view, the students did nothing wrong and the police hold 100% of the blame. If you want to justify your view, don’t bring in national forests. My 3 examples were of a college campus, I’m sorry if you thought otherwise
That’s fine, you worded yourself poorly, spoke in generalizations and now wish to rein the debate back to something relating to what you want to talk about. That’s alright, the blame of course is entirely yours for speaking imprecisely. But your refined comments offer nothing of interest to me so I likewise have nothing to discuss with you on this topic.
Eh, whatever. Just so we’re both agreed that the kids did nothing wrong and the cops take all the blame 
I think it’s already confirmed based on departmental statements/actions that the pepper spraying was wrong, correct? That’s already a resolved part of this situation.
I don’t know enough about the law/rules of using the park/UC-Davis’ administrative ability to order people removed from the park etc to know if the college students were legally permitted to be there or not. I haven’t followed the case enough to know if that ever came up or was clarified.
Not exactly. He was put on paid leave and subsequently resigned, and the university settled with the students.