By now you’ve probably seen the pictures or video of seated, non-violent protestors at U.C. Davis being doused with pepper spray. Having been subjected to pepper spray (and its nasty cousin, tear gas), I can empathize with the protestors. While I’m not particularly sympathetic to their cause, I am appalled at the way they were treated. I completely agree with Tobias Winright, a theological ethicist who used to work in law enforcement, who explains why the use of pepper spray in this situation appears to be excessive:
Now, I was not there, and I do not know all the details leading up to it; however, police are trained to remove protesters like these (their tactic of kneeling and making the police have to move them reminds me of similar approaches employed by some Catholic anti-abortion and/or anti-war protesters) through alternative means. For example, one officer can touch certain pressure-points (which still may involve some pain) while another officer binds protester’s hands as they become unlinked to others’ arms. The use of pepper spray in many of the videos I’ve seen (at UC-Davis and elsewhere) appears more to aim at punishing rather than at getting a threatening person to comply as safely (for all, the officer as well as the offender) as possible. Simply put, the use of force (including pepper spray, handcuffing, the use of batons, etc.) is not at all supposed to involve any notion of punishment or humiliation. Police are supposed to serve and protect all citizens, including those they regrettably have to arrest. For the latter, though, any force necessary to subdue the suspect should beproportionate (i.e., similar to the moral reasoning found in the Catholic just war tradition–just enough necessary to accomplish the job and in the least harmful way, if possible, given a constellation of available options). Unfortunately, not all police officers are trained well (and some who are trained well sometimes fail to adhere to that training). Also, not all departments possess and embody a “just policing” ethos, although much has been attempted to move toward “social peacekeeping” or “community policing” models in recent decades. Even so, I recall hearing a training officer at a city police department where I taught ethics workshops (and a department that emphasized community policing) once tell trainees while practicing arrest techniques for dealing with protesters, “There’s no such thing as nonviolence and pacifist protesters.” Not good. [emphasis in original]
Joe Carter is the web editor of First Things. You can follow him on Twitter.
November 25th, 2011 | 4:32 pm
UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau vetted campus police protocols that allow police to use batons on students protesting increases in tuition and student debt.
Apology and excuses not accepted.
OUST University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau
November 25th, 2011 | 6:42 pm
You don’t have the full story, Joe. They were warned beforehand that they would be sprayed if they didn’t move. That strikes me as more than fair. Listen to the shouting and tell me that if you were a PO there that you would have complete confidence that the protestors would remain non violent.
http://www.breitbart.tv/video-proof-uc-davis-protesters-were-warned-before-pepper-spray-incident/
November 25th, 2011 | 8:05 pm
“They were warned beforehand that they would be sprayed if they didn’t move.”
Ah yes, that covers the moral bases here. If your burglar warns you he will club you senseless, you can only hit him up for theft, not for assault and battery.
Clearly, some officers of the peace are anything but …
November 25th, 2011 | 8:16 pm
Had I been there, as a trained PO, I would not have done what the Lt did with the pepper spray. In fact, I would have been worried more that the police use of pepper spray might actually incite violence from the protesters. In this case, I’m sorry, especially as a former law enforcement officer, but the protesters showed more discipline than the police, who were more than armed enough to handle things (such as with pepper spray) if things escalated (e.g., if the protesters resorted to violence). This is not to say that I agree with everything about the protests or what the protesters are doing either.
November 26th, 2011 | 4:05 am
What I’ve not heard is acceptable procedures for this situation – I’m sure there are some and things they could have done. It seems that some writers, including the one quoted here go beyond condemning excessive use of force by the police and slip into encouraging resistance of the protesters (who in many cases are better trained than the police).
Regardless of what the police do or do not do, it also has to be asked is what individual protesters are doing is moral. Is civil disobedience always in the right? Does having a cause, any cause, give one the prima facie right to disobey the law?
November 26th, 2011 | 7:39 am
“They were warned beforehand that they would be sprayed if they didn’t move.”
Ah yes, that covers the moral bases here. If your burglar warns you he will club you senseless, you can only hit him up for theft, not for assault and battery.
Civil disobedience is for people with the courage to accept the consequences – even if that includes tanks or bullets.
If you’re a sniveling crybaby who can’t tell the difference between “excessive force” vs. “least injurious means of compelling compliance”, then you need to find another line of work, because you fail at “changing the world through protest”.
They knew they were breaking the law.
They were warned that consequences were immanent.
They chose to accept the consequences.
They have no right to complain that the consequences were unpleasant. There is no right – legal or moral – to break the law at will, ignore authorities, etc.
November 26th, 2011 | 7:40 am
immanent
imminent.
oops.
November 26th, 2011 | 2:58 pm
One suggestion I’ve read recommended turning on garden hoses upslope from where the protesters were sitting and letting ice cold water soak their pants. Unless they were really really protesting something substantive (like, say, a war, or the deprivation of an entire people of their civil rights) they would likely disperse after an uncomfortable time. Of course, that too would be denounced as torture, but it would sound much sillier.
Perhaps they could be warned ahead of time that they were blocking public access to the handicapped, or others of the 98.999% of non-protesters.
November 26th, 2011 | 4:35 pm
Blake, I think the question remains whether the consequences were appropriate to the level and nature of law-breaking going on. The police aren’t entitled to do just *anything* just because someone doesn’t comply, any more than people are entitled to break the law and be left completely alone. They have no more right to beat you senseless for non-violent resistance, than the burglar does — nor do they have a right to perpetrate any kind of force that is excessive in comparison to the danger you present to them or to others. This is not a police state. They have a duty to assess the threat and react proportionately — which does not always mean kid gloves, either.
The only real questions here, and the answers to them aren’t obvious to my mind either way, is whether the police assessed any perceived threat the protestors might have presented, and whether their response was proportionate to what that threat might have been.
November 26th, 2011 | 4:37 pm
BTW, “proportionately” does not mean “equally,” either. They do have a duty to effectively subdue any danger people actually present, but only up to the point necessary.
November 26th, 2011 | 6:11 pm
@ Ye Olde Statistician,
About blocking the pathway. It seems they only blocked the pathway after the police arrived. Also, if you look at a satellite photo of the area, you’ll see that the path is in the middle of a large, open quad that anyone can easily walk through or around.
There were no reports of the protesters’ tent city blocking anyone’s way. And even if so, I will assume that they would allow a handicapped person to go through.
November 26th, 2011 | 10:04 pm
The analogy of the police being burglars breaks down completely. A burglar is always completely outside the law and has no right to legally do anything to you. Whether or not you approve of the pepper spray as a tactic, the position of the police is not the same and they are entitled, expected!, to take action against lawbreakers. The question is what action. It seems to me that if the police say stop x or be arrested, one can’t exactly complain if continuing x results in an arrest. I would see the warning about spraying in the same light and, yes, that covers all the moral bases here.
November 27th, 2011 | 6:57 am
Someone who is obstructing the highway is not bound to comply with any request to move. The police, however, may pick him up and move him, just as they may a log or any other obstacle. If he then assaults the police, who are trying to remove him, they may use sufficient force to overcome his resistance.
November 27th, 2011 | 9:24 am
Joe,
perhaps you might suggest a better way to clear the area, with less injury to the protestors & police.
Remember a protestor could be severely injured being pulled away from his neighbor.
November 27th, 2011 | 10:18 am
“The question is what action. It seems to me that if the police say stop x or be arrested, one can’t exactly complain if continuing x results in an arrest. I would see the warning about spraying in the same light”
That’s just begging the question, though. Police arrest suspects in order to both ensure they show up for court (either through continued detention or through the posting of a bail bond) and to remove an imminent threat to public safety or welfare.
Pepper spraying serves a completely different purpose. As used in this case, it is what law enforcement officers themselves call “pain compliance.” That is, if a person refuses to obey an officer’s instructions, cause that person enough pain so that he will change his mind.
Pain compliance ought to be ethically challenging because it has as its immediate aim the cause of acute pain in another person in order to break that person’s will to resist.
It also poses a problem in terms of incentives: most cops hate wrestling with suspects and will try to avoid it if they can. But once you give cops an ability to inflict acute pain by remote control, that removes a barrier to the use of force. Old-fashioned cops had to rely on interpersonal skills and “verbal judo” to get people to do what they were ordered to do to avoid escalating a confrontation. Now, they can just say, “Do what I say or get maced.” Naturally, that will result in more frequent uses of force.
November 27th, 2011 | 1:56 pm
@Mark- Tobias Winwright think the pepper srpay was used to punish, and suggest an alternative of, “For example, one officer can touch certain pressure-points (which still may involve some pain) while another officer binds protester’s hands as they become unlinked to others’ arms.” If the pepper spray is simply a method of pain compliance, then aren’t we simply talking about whether the pepper spray or the pressure points technique inflicts more pain? And wouldn’t that vary from person to person?
November 27th, 2011 | 2:10 pm
Blake, I think the question remains whether the consequences were appropriate to the level and nature of law-breaking going on.
No, the question is whether authority figures have the right to enforce rules, or whether protesters are immune from being expected to comply with police.
Pepper spray is appropriate because it has less likelihood of causing serious injury than physically moving the bodies, tasering them, shooting them, or any other method.
The act of not letting the protesters occupy the space is what is viewed as “excessive”. The people who object are quite seriously of the belief that authorities should be impotent in the face of these protesters.
You cannot redefine things like “nazi, holocaust, genocide” without trivializing real Nazi atrocities, the real Holocaust, and real genocide. You cannot redefine rape to include every little slight and insult without trivializing real rape victims. And you can’t call this “excessive force” without trivializing the victims of real excessive force – who get far less media attention why again?
November 27th, 2011 | 2:23 pm
Pain compliance ought to be ethically challenging because it has as its immediate aim the cause of acute pain in another person in order to break that person’s will to resist.
So you’re saying that we shouldn’t “break their will to resist”.
But it is appropriate to break someone’s will to resist when they are refusing to comply with a lawful order.
This is the whole point of dispute. Your argument assumes that people have the right to resist any authority they don’t happen to agree with. I don’t recognize any such right, ethically.
Refusing to cooperate with authorities is only justifiable if it is the last, only, and necessary recourse.
This is not the case in the USA. If you don’t agree with the way authorities are using their force, there are options. Simply choosing to ignore or refuse to cooperate with an authority figure who is operating within his jurisdiction is not legitimately one of them. Anyone who chooses this needs to be made to comply – and if pain compliance is the way with least risk of injury to the officer, then it’s not unreasonable.
The concept of civil disobedience is not a guarantee that you can ignore any law you like without consequences.
November 27th, 2011 | 4:23 pm
The real story is that despite the best efforts of the Occupy movement, no one cares. The UC Davis students hoped to become the Rosa Parks of the movement, which the nation fittingly greeted with a yawn. Time for the kids to go back to class….
November 27th, 2011 | 6:47 pm
@ Blake,
If we are to believe Chancellor Katehi, then the police were ordered specifically only to remove the tents, not the people, and not to use force or make any arrests. That needs to be taken into account.
It should also be taken into account that they only blocked the pathway after the police arrived.
Finally, while it may have been a lawful order to tell those students to move, the discussion here is about whether Pepper spray was appropriate or excessive in bringing about compliance in that particular situation. The consensus seems to be that it was excessive.
November 27th, 2011 | 8:58 pm
Publius
How facile. The nation did not yawn. Nor was Rosa Parks initially successful.
November 27th, 2011 | 9:43 pm
A “consensus here” that pepper spray was excessive does mean it was excessive, just that a half a dozen folks seem to feel it was. That seems like a fairly insignificant outcome.
November 28th, 2011 | 12:48 am
Dave S,
I believe the consensus is among the public. Given the coverage this has had, and the outrage it provoked, the public has spoken. If pepper spray in that situation was “standard procedure”, then procedure’s gotta change.
I also spoke with a former law enforcement officer who dealt with crowd control issues very often. He said the video should be titled “How To Start A Riot.” In crowd control situations, law enforcement has to make good judgement about whether the force they use will escalate or deescalate the situation. In this case, the pepper spray escalated the situation. Fortunately, the students proved their commitment to nonviolence.
November 28th, 2011 | 9:40 am
As to whether the pepper spray was excessive, I am still up in the air.
But Jim, your argument is circular. The pepper spray did not escalate the situation. No riot ensued. No injuries occurred, at least that I have heard of. Whether this occurred because the resistors were preoccupied with the capcesin burn or they maintained their commitment to non-violence is unclear. In either event, it looks like the police judgement as to the crowd’s reaction was accurate, if my judgement is made with hindsight.
Unsaid here is what the police should have done instead.
November 28th, 2011 | 11:00 am
“You cannot redefine things like “nazi, holocaust, genocide” without trivializing real Nazi atrocities, the real Holocaust, and real genocide. You cannot redefine rape to include every little slight and insult without trivializing real rape victims. And you can’t call this “excessive force” without trivializing the victims of real excessive force – who get far less media attention why again?”
Sentence 1: agree. Sentence 2: agree. Sentence 3: whoa there. Excessive merely means “too much.” It does not have a definite connotation of scale the way “genocide” or “rape” do.
If it is too much for the situation, it is too much, even if it is only a little too much. It doesn’t make it equivalently bad to rape or genocide, of course, but it can still be deemed worthy of negative evaluation if it’s not the right response in the situation. That’s a more nuanced determination than the more obvious questions of whether something rises to the level of “genocide,” “rape,” or “Holocaust,” but it’s still not illegitimate to talk about whether a line has been crossed, and I can’t think of a better term to use to talk about it than “excessive (i.e. “too much”) force.”
“No, the question is whether authority figures have the right to enforce rules, or whether protesters are immune from being expected to comply with police.”
No, that’s precisely NOT the question, because that either leaves unanswered the question, “And what should they do when then the protestors don’t comply, and what may they not do?” or else answers it by default as “They can do anything they want.” If you’re a policeman or someone in charge of the police, you have to be able to answer that question, and you can’t answer it with “whatever they want.” It is perfectly legitimate to discuss what *is* and *is not* an appropriate way for the police to deal with resistance — that is, unless anyone here is arguing that they just shouldn’t deal with it at all, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone argue that.
November 28th, 2011 | 11:09 am
@ Mike,
When I referred to the commitment to nonviolence and escalation, I was referring not just to those who were pepper sprayed, but the rest of the crowd. Most sources say that the majority of people there were bystanders drawn to the scene by what was happening (it’s a busy central quad). In the video footage, we can cee that once the protestors were sprayed, the entire crowd turned against the police and slowly pushed them off of the quad, and no one threw a punch.
As to what the police should have done: If we are to believe Chancellor Katehi, the police were instructed not to use force or make any arrests, and to back off if the students resisted because she “didn’t want another Berkeley.”
November 28th, 2011 | 12:57 pm
@Liam,
Facile?
Where’s the outrage or the support for the Occupiers? Maybe on the Upper East Side and in Venezuela, but as recently polling data shows this movement is alienating most Americans.
This report appeared on the wire services last week: “Public support for the Occupy Wall Street movement is down and opposition up sharply in a new national survey taken by the Democratic-leaning firm of Public Policy Polling.
By a narrow margin, more of those surveyed have a higher opinion of the Tea Party movement than Occupy Wall Street, according to the poll taken Nov. 10 to 13, as authorities ordered OWS encampments dismantled in a number of cities.
In the latest survey, 33 percent voiced support for Occupy Wall Street, down from 35 percent in a previous poll, while opposition to the movement climbed from 36 percent to 45 percent. Twenty-two percent were unsure.
The poll asked: “Do you have a higher opinion of the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Tea Party movement?” Forty-three percent opted for Tea Party, 37 percent for the occupiers.
‘These are rough numbers for Occupy Wall Street. The particularly painful part is falling behind the Tea Party,’ Chris Bowers wrote on the dailykos.com website. Dailykos.com has been outspoken in its support for the occupiers.”
November 29th, 2011 | 7:38 am
If we are to believe Chancellor Katehi, then the police were ordered specifically only to remove the tents, not the people, and not to use force or make any arrests. That needs to be taken into account.
It should also be taken into account that they only blocked the pathway after the police arrived.
So in other words protesters have the right to pick and choose when they are obliged to obey lawful orders from authorized authority figures acting within their jurisdiction?
November 29th, 2011 | 8:29 am
@Jim,
The fact remains, there was no riot. Whether or not the crowd’s non-violence commitment is the reason, the police did not cause a riot, which says something positive for their judgement as well. And your second paragraph essentially says the police should have done nothing. Why even have police then? Why were they there?
Put another way, is pepper spray ever legitimate for crowd control?
Here in Boston, we had an actual riot, I believe just when the Redsox first won the World Series. The police used rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse the mob. A women was hit in the face and later died. What should the police have done instead? Would pepper spray have been legitimate then?
November 29th, 2011 | 10:44 am
Put another way, is pepper spray ever legitimate for crowd control?
Apparently crowd control itself is not appropriate.
At least not when the crowd consists of affluent white spoiled young people.
The police in most places stood by and did nothing about “protests” that included public defecation, harassing and scaring little children on their way to school, and pushing old women down stairs.
Most American citizens know they can’t get away with behavior like that. Ordinary citizens get the taser for much less.
But these protesters are being treated to a different standard – by the media, because they find it politically convenient to do so, and by the police, because the police know they do not have the support of the political class that will punish the police, not the protesters – no matter how many windows get broken or how many local merchants are vandalized.
It’ll do these kids good to learn that what they think of as “power” is really in fact nothing but “indulgence”.
November 29th, 2011 | 3:58 pm
Blake and Mike
First, the issue is how police should appropriately respond to a given situation. The key word there is appropriately. One student at the rally had a sign saying “Riot gear for riots, not for camping without a permit!”
Second, if Katehi really told them not to make any arrests and back off if the students resisted, then that’s exactly what they should have done. Their actions would have been perfectly consistent with their instructions.
Third, when it comes to crowd control, most people have absolutely no problem with using riot control methods like pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets etc. in the event of an actual riot where people are being violent. By all means they should do everything they can to quell a violent scene. But that wasn’t what we saw at UC Davis (it was what we saw at Penn State and the police did nothing). None of the UC Davis students were turning over cars, breaking windows, vandalizing, or scaring anybody. That’s why there was so much outrage – not because pepper spray was used but because it was used on people who were obviously no threat to anyone.
November 29th, 2011 | 4:41 pm
That’s why there was so much outrage – not because pepper spray was used but because it was used on people who were obviously no threat to anyone.
When people do not cooperate with authority, it cannot be said they are no threat.
By directly challenging authority, they present the ultimate threat. You might think “occupation” is a joke, but it is actually an act of war. It is a declaration that the authority is illegitimate and should be overthrown.
Perhaps you are too sheltered to realize what that means. Suffice to say we should all give thanks that this movement is too small to seriously overthrow American authority, because anarchy is not the game college students think it is.
Civil disobedience is not a game or a toy. It is not something children should be encouraged to do for fun. It should be used only by people with real injustices – grievous injustices that cannot be addressed through more direct means. It’s not for showoffs doing street theater, it’s for people who are serious enough about what they are doing that they understand and accept in full the consequences of deliberately challenging authority – knowing in advance that to be successful at challenging authority is to present a threat.
I am glad the authorities put them down with enough force to keep the kiddies from escalating their ignorant nonsense.
November 30th, 2011 | 3:42 am
If the Occupiers would have been ordered to leave, and cited for the many laws they broke, from littering to acts of violence, on the very first days they started this nonsense in Manhattan, it would have ended there and the rest of the country would have been spared. Bloomberg is ultimately responsible for the pepper spray incident, because he shirked his duty. This empowered the spoiled brat lawbreakers and encouraged illegal behavior. They are not cute students, they are lawbreakers. When the very first window is broken or person is shoved, on go the handcuffs. I don’t see what’s so complicated.
November 30th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
As an aside, the decision on rubber bullets was to ban them entirely from crowd control.
@Jim
Re: First. This is not an answer. The question is: exactly what is appropriate?
Re: Second, if those were Katehi’s instructions, then she carries the fault for the pepper spray because they are non-instructions, i.e. instructions that self-cancel.
Re: Third, here you are simply wrong as I note at the beginning. We have progressed considerably in crowd control from guns and batons to tear gun and other non-lethal methods. We are sorting those out now with the limitations of rubber bullets (they are still projectiles) and tazers (possible heart attacks). If pepper spray is also not on the menu, then what is? More importantly, when and why?
I consider the clearing yesterday of OccupyLA. The police used a swarm technique that worked quite well, though numerous arrests (>200) were part of it. I’m very curious to see how OccupyBoston concludes, though a swarm technique was used to clear a side park when the occupation tried to expand. Of course in both cases, we had professional police forces involved. What was the case at UC Davis? Were these campus police?
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