POLICE, STUDENT PROTESTERS AND PEPPER SPRAY
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 AT 3:08PM
Tom Hayden testifies at a December 14, 2011 joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Education and the Assembly Committee on Higher Education at the state Capitol in Sacramento.In the most comprehensive official report on police tactics towards campus anti-tuition protests since the Occupy movement broke out last year, a University of California investigation concludes, “The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”The police action was code-named Operation Eco-Friendly. The report delves deeply into the irrationality of administrative conduct, which resulted in the pepper spraying of UC Davis students on that day, and also paints one of the first portraits of the good-natured nonviolent idealism among the new wave of student protestors.
The report was issued in name of Dr. Cruz Reynoso of the Davis campus, a former member of the California Supreme Court who lost his position during the anti-crime, anti-government hysteria that swept California in 1986, a precursor of the Neo-Con and Tea Party counter-