UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident

[Punoqllads]

The facts are in. (PDF) Individual officers’ names have been redacted.

The Reynoso Report says:

• There was no legal basis for removing Occupiers affiliated with UC Davis.
• There was no substantiation that any “non-affiliates” were part of the encampment.
• The ostensible reason for removing the encampment was for the protection of students, but there was no consideration of alternatives to forcible dismantling of the encampment.
• The scope of the operation was not effectively communicated between any parties involved in the fiasco.
• The decisions were consensus-based, which instead of making everybody responsible, made nobody responsible.
• Even with two weeks notice about the occupation, the UC Davis Police Department created a plan that failed to follow national- or state-mandated rules.
• And they didn’t even follow that plan.
• Neither policy nor objective evidence supported the use of pepper spray.
• The police were neither authorized nor trained in the use of the aerosol projector (MK-9).
• Police Lieutenants failed to follow their Chief’s directives.

And on, and on, and on.

[What_the]

“national- or state-mandated rules” ?? With regard to what?

Assuming that they did everything wrong up to the point that the dismantling began, does it say anything about how the peaceful occupiers acted at that point and the reactions of the bad guys?

[Ethilrist]

That’s the thing–there weren’t any bad guys, day of. Every single person involved thought that they were doing exactly the right, correct, legal thing at any given moment in the process.

Many of them were mistaken.

And, from what I recall, the peaceful occupiers got arrested (when they shouldn’t have) by people who broke the law in doing so (and didn’t, themselves, get arrested for it).

[Punoqllads]

@What_the

“national- or state-mandated rules” ?? With regard to what?

From the report:

UC Davis police did not following national or state-mandated rules regarding incident/event planning (NIMS/SEMS). There are specific law enforcement rules and regulations about mutual aid and joint response to emergencies. The operations plans that were created by the UCDPD did not follow the appropriate and normal format. They lacked signature blocks for creation, review and approval. Large portions of the operations plans were left blank.

There were operational elements described that the police did not execute. The plan failed to account for prisoner transport from the scene of the event/operation to the site of prisoner processing. Kroll notes, “A key flaw of the police operations plan prepared by Officer P and Pike is that the plan failed to address prisoner transport.” The Department Operations Center (which is referred to in the plan) was not set up in an appropriate fashion. Kroll notes as well the failure to pre-brief the Davis Police Department, the closest quick-reaction force in the event of a problem, was a significant oversight.

Perhaps most importantly, the operations plan did not clearly define or inappropriately defined the roles of the supervisors of the police in the field. For example, Lieutenant Pike was not given a role in the Operations Plan for November 18. Moreover, the assignment of the two lieutenants to the actual dismantling of the tents by the Chief of Police was an inappropriate role for supervisors, especially for the Incident Commander. As Kroll observes, “the roles of the supervisors were either unclear or inappropriate.”

@What_the

Assuming that they did everything wrong up to the point that the dismantling began, does it say anything about how the peaceful occupiers acted at that point and the reactions of the bad guys?

Again, from the report:

First, and foremost, the apparent reason for the officer and arrestees remaining on the Quad after the tents were down was because there had been no arrangements made to transport the arrestees from the Quad. The lack of timely decision-making by Lts. Pike and Officer P to respond to this unplanned situation caused an escalation of an already volatile situation.

There are a number of other factors that undermine the belief that there was no alternative to use of pepper spray. Specifically, the following belie the conclusion:

• Officer F was able to walk arrestees through the crowd to a waiting squad car for transport to the Police Station;
• Officer P was able to step over the line of seated protesters and walk through the crowd to meet with the Davis PD who arrived to provide mutual aid. He led the Davis PD contingent back through the crowd to the protesters without incident;
• Lt. Pike’s actions and body language include stepping over the seated protesters to get to their faces, a move that would not generally be undertaken with a hostile crowd.
• Approximately 20 minutes after the pepper spray was used, Lt. Pike and one other officer returned to Quad without riot gear and asked protesters to remove additional tents that had been erected. The tents were removed without incident.

[Punoqllads]

I just found the a link to as well as a summary of NIMS and SEMS in the report if you’re interested:

There are both statewide and national emergency services standards for decision-making by governmental agencies, including university campuses, when dealing with extraordinary events. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is modeled on California’s Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) which includes within its scope the use of the Incident Command System (ICS) for managing actual events. NIMS/SEMS are designed “to give standard response and operation procedures to reduce the problems and potential for miscommunication on such incidents” (http://www.calema.ca.gov/PlanningandPreparedness/Documents/SEMS_%20Foundation_ver_01-2010.pdf) and are flexibly designed to be available for all forms of government including universities. NIMS/SEMS procedures are specifically designed to support pre-event planning. Elements addressed within NIMS/SEMS include a formal organizational structure and decision-making process, standardized processes for developing incident objectives to ensure uniform understanding, expectations for internal and external communication strategies and divisions specifically charged with gathering intelligence and planning for alternative scenarios.