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UCSC Student Protest Ends in Excessive Force on the Part of Police

  
 
TeN
02:20 / 27.04.05
article
video
 
 
sleazenation
07:31 / 27.04.05
Ten - are you going to elaborate on the links you just posted and add a summary to this thread? It is considered good etiquette that you do...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:34 / 27.04.05
I've read the report, but not seen the video - what sort of excessive force was used? Is it like Kent State level?
 
 
MJ-12
15:49 / 27.04.05
From the vid, it seems pretty restrained from both sides- the protestors trying to keep their chain together, but not throwing shit at the cops, the cops using come-alongs, but not going in with batons swinging.
 
 
TeN
18:27 / 27.04.05
sorry about not elaborating... i found this just before I went to sleep and it was kind of a last minute post before i went to bed. that and i wanted to see some of your reactions before i added my own.

Haus -
basically the students have made a human chain in an attempt to resist arrest. the riot police press on the resisting student's pressure points until they pass out, and then cuff them. many of the students are in obvious physical pain, and a few of them begin coughing and gasping for air, and their faces turn red as they are literally choked. i recomend you watch it... it was certainly sobering for me to say the least.
it's not "Kent-state level," no, but it was still shocking to me because of a few things:
a) the students were completely non-violent. even when the police resorted to excessive force, they continued to keep their distance and no violence against police is shown in the video, nor has it been reported... even those being assaulted and arrested don't retaliate. (at kent, the protests were unruly, with police vehicles being damaged, bonfires lit, and later, even buildings being lit on fire, local shops vandelized and looted, and rocks pelted at police officers)
b) the charge these kids are being arrested for is trespassing, a minor misdemeanor, not even considered a crime in some jurisdictions. and yet dozens of riot police in full riot gear are used to forcefully remove the protestors. and keep in mind, the school is charging them for trespassing on their own campus
c) the kent state protests were during a time of great national tention, and the stand-off between the students and the national guard embodied the greater standoff between those who supported and those who opposed the war. the national guard at kent held personal resentment toward the protestors, and the same went for the other way around. in this incident at UCSC, the students are protesting a number of localized issues, including rising tuition costs and general mismanagement on the part of school administrators... the police have nothing against these students personally and there's no reason for them to act irrationally.

on whether the cops were justified... the students did commit a crime (trespassing and resisting arrest) and so I don't think it's unreasonable to have charges pressed against them (after all, anyone who commits an act of civil disobedience should be fully aware that they risk being arrested... if you don't want to be arrested, don't commit civil disobedience... that's common sense). what i'm not okay with, however, is that the police resorted to such drastic and uncalled for measures. although it would be hard to fight it in court, what the police officers did is most definetely illegal, as excessive force cannot be used to effect an arrest unless the suspect is armed

and yes, i know this isn't exactly anything new, but it's still important to note the way in which even small, minor protest such as this continues to be met with violence on the part of law enforcement
 
 
Boy in a Suitcase
00:14 / 22.05.05
I found this clip nightmarish. I used to go to UCSC; I can't imagine something like this occuring there. Protests are part of the town character, not an uncommon occurence and the police usually seemed trained in ways to interact appropriately with these situations. It looks like these kids would have gone along peacefully if this had been handled correctly.
 
 
fuckbaked
05:15 / 22.05.05
It looks like these kids would have gone along peacefully if this had been handled correctly.

They decided that they were going to resist arrest before the police even showed up.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:33 / 23.05.05
It's interesting: this is a peaceful protest in the sense that no one threw a punch. At the same time, there's a woman yelling "I hate you" in the background, and there's a massive amount of hostility toward the police in evidence. Unsurprising, since they are using very painful pressure points to remove activists, but it doesn't feel exactly peaceful, more passive-aggressive.

At the same time, I'm unsettled by the creation of a trauma event like this. It seems to foster non-communication rather than dialogue.

All that said, it's utterly revolting that a university would call in riot police to break up a demonstration of this kind on its own campus, and it staggers me that police would consider it good practice to respond in this way, which appears wantonly violent and almost calculated to create negative reactions in the protest and in the aftermath.

I just wish the cause were a little more impressive - this seems to be over internal university funding.
 
 
fuckbaked
18:54 / 23.05.05
"All that said, it's utterly revolting that a university would call in riot police to break up a demonstration of this kind on its own campus, and it staggers me that police would consider it good practice to respond in this way, which appears wantonly violent and almost calculated to create negative reactions in the protest and in the aftermath."

The police action was NOT to break up a protest, as I see it. The students (and others who were there) were allowed to protest. They were told that they could protest at the base of campus during the day, but that they couldn't all camp at the base of campus due to safety concerns, a lack of bathrooms, and other problems (I think that having a large group of people camping with no bathrooms is a big problem). The university didn't tell them, "no, you can't camp here, go home", but instead, they told the protestors that they were free to camp in the Quarry instead of at the base of campus. There are bathrooms at the quarry. I really think these protestors who decided to stay at the base of campus and get arrested, knowing that the police would be called in to arrest them, wanted some sort of altercation so they could look like martyrs who were subject to police violence for mere protesting.

"I just wish the cause were a little more impressive - this seems to be over internal university funding."

One of the major, major problems with the protest, as I see it, was the lack of organization. The flyers and such put out by the organizers were calling for people to camp with them, but giving very little information on why, and throwing around a few buzz words like "budgeting priorities". Indeed, the protestors made no secret of the fact that they didn't really have much in the way of a platform. If you read this news article, you'll learn that the students met on thursday, April 21st to create a list of demands for the univeristy, when their protest had been going on since Monday, April 18.

I am a UCSC student, and I would have been down there protesting, if I'd thought the protest was well organized and had a clear message. But I didn't. I saw the flyers, went to the website, and was left with the distinct impression that the people who were organizing it were more interested in camping than in bringing about change in the university, so I stayed the hell away.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:54 / 24.05.05
Well, the thing is that neither the fact that the protest was pretty badly organised, nor the fact that it may not have been terribly worthy, nor even the fact that the protestors were obdurate about where they were protesting, really justifies the action of the riot police. What you have there is a group of people posing no physical threat, and they are subjected to physical assault - in some cases quite dangerous and in almost all cases painful. For a university to sponsor such an action is grotesque.
 
 
fuckbaked
04:13 / 25.05.05
"What you have there is a group of people posing no physical threat, and they are subjected to physical assault - in some cases quite dangerous and in almost all cases painful."

I'd also like to quote Bob Fitch, from the Resource Center for Nonviolence, who is quoted in City On A Hill Press as saying, "Minimal use of force to me is talking to someone and convincing them to act differently." He was speaking about the arrests of the Tent U protestors.

Ok, so I don't like what the police did in this situation, but I see the question not as "what should the police have done to with these protestors" but "what should the police do when arresting someone who is resisting arrest for a nonvoilent offense". Like, if you had a group of people sitting at the base of campus smoking crack, I'd imagine that the univeristy would call the police to have the people arrested. If those people linked their arms together and refused to abide with the police, what should the police do? All I can see are 2 options:

1. The police get voilent and arrest the crack-smokers.

2. The police try to convince the crack-smokers to voluntarily go to jail, and when the crack-smokers continue to resist, the police eventually just leave, and the people don't get arrested. As long as the police can't determine the identities of the people involved, there would be no way for them to charge the crack-smokers with a crime.

While trespassing (at least in the Tent U situation) is obviously more minor than smoking crack, they're both nonviolent offenses. I don't think anyone at the university called the police and said "I want you to arrest the protestors, and I want you to do it as violently as possibly". They simply asked for the protestors to be arrested, as they would ask for anyone who's committing a crime on campus. If someone who's being arrested on campus resists arrest and the police get violent, is it really something that can be blamed on the university? The law allows the police to use these violent means. Do you want that to change? If so, how do you propose it could be changed? How would the police arrest people who are resisting arrest without getting violent?

I don't want to see the police using violence on nonviolent people, but I don't see any alternative that allows the police to do their job.
 
 
LykeX
17:59 / 25.05.05
...police do their job, my ass. If the crime they are to be arrested for was nonviolent and if they aren't being violent in resisting arrest, then the police should be nonviolent themselves.
As long as no one has been hurt or are in immediate danger of being hurt, the police shouldn't use force.
They can wait around for the protesters/cracksmokers to get tired of sitting with their arms linked and arrest them then. After all, as long as they are sitting down, they aren't making any trouble.
 
 
astrojax69
03:50 / 26.05.05


..but if they are committing an offence during this time i guess the police are obliged to act, no? what is the answer?

if the police didn't act at all, went away til everyone was tired and came back then, they have a) left the scene of a crime where an offence is being committed, but b) have probably reduced the efficacy of the protest in the first place, which is mainly to get promotion for the cause. so mebbe this isn't a bad option?

but hen c) the university administration gets pissed off at the police who are seen to be not doing their job... how can the police win?
 
 
fuckbaked
04:08 / 27.05.05
If the police were to just wait around until people decided to let themselves be arrested, I expect that a lot of people would try to wait even longer than the police could. The police are pretty busy, and they can't wait 12 hours until someone decided to give up on resisting. What if they caught me smoking pot in the woods (yeah, unlikely, as the cops don't seem to prowl the woods for pot-smokers), and I latched onto a tree? I could stay put for 24 hours or more, and I'd consiter it a worthwhile waste of time if I thought the police might actually be forced to go away at some point, as the consequences of a possesion of marijuana charge could be pretty bad for me (people with drug offenses are not allowed to have financial aide for school, so it might prevent me from finishing college if I were arrested, plus it would give me a criminal record which would make it even harder for me to get jobs). If a lot of people resisted like this, the police would be spending tons and tons of time just waiting around for people, and to be able to do that, and still have time to persue violent criminals, the police forces would need to hire many, many more officers. I imagine that the number of police officers would at least triple (totally unquantitative number that I made up), and when that happened, everyone would realize that they couldn't outwait the police, so few people would actually resist. Unfortunately, the police would not be able to reduce their numbers when this happened, because the public would become aware of it, and once more, people would start clinging to trees and the like. We'd end up with a situation where there are drastically more police officers, and they'd be bored as hell. I think that having that many cops around would be a nightmare, and if they had fewer real crimes to investigate than they had time, they'd be more likely to end up harrassing people and butting into their lives.

I don't like the police tactics, but I have yet to hear a good alternative.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:10 / 27.05.05
Well, is that an alternbative to "using reasonable force", or an alternative to "applying pressure to pressure points until people pass out, then carrying them away"? Rendering somebody unconscious is a pretty big step in terms of pacifying, and it seems quite extreme to apply it as a matter of course to a non-violent protest.
 
 
Kirk Ultra
22:07 / 27.05.05
I live in Santa Cruz, and i used to go to UCSC.

The police who assaulted those students were not Santa Cruz police, they were called up from Berkley (which is about an hour's drive away) by the school's chancelor specifically to deal with these protesters, so being too busy to wait around and solve things peacefully, as We suggests, was not a factor. The police were just waiting for the clock to strike the time when it becomes technically illegal to be there. Then they rushed in and attacked.

Telling them to take the protest to the quarry was rediculous. Its a forest in a canyon that's only visable from a rickety old bridge almost nobody uses. Its like people being forced into "Free Speech Zones" when trying to protest a Bush appearance. NOBODY would have seen them, and there's no reason any protestor who actually cared about what they're protesting about would allow themselves to be moved there.

I dont know all the details of what the protestors were fighting for, but it seems to be over money, and if it is, its entirely justified. There is a lot of corruption in the UC Santa Cruz management, going all the way up to the chancellor herself. There's an enormous budget problem at UCSC, but even with all the money the school is loosing and how many classes they close (even though it says there's a journalism department at UCSC, all the journalism classes are indefinately closed - they keep it in their catalogs though to make the school look good), the management still loves to pad their own pockets. It cost something like $4,500 to run a class at UCSC, and in the midst of the all this money trouble the chancellor (the same person who had those students assaulted) just created a completely pointless new job on campus for her girlfriend, paying something like $140,000 per year. This isn't the only case of corrupt spending on campus, but its a pretty good example.

Maybe the protestors were technically there illegally (though I have no idea how it can be illegal for students and campus employees to be on campus), but they were protesting peacefully and absolutely nothing they did can justify the savegery of what the school had those cops do.
 
 
fuckbaked
12:17 / 28.05.05
Kirk said: "The police who assaulted those students were not Santa Cruz police, they were called up from Berkley (which is about an hour's drive away) by the school's chancelor specifically to deal with these protesters"

I heard that about half the police were from Berkeley, and the rest from Santa Cruz (can't find a link, sorry). I would assume that the Santa Cruz police called the Berkeley police for help, since they knew that they would have a huge mob of people resisting arrest to deal with, and they probably didn't have the resources to deal with it alone. I doubt that the chancellor called the police in Berkeley rather than the police in Santa Cruz.

Kirk said: "The police were just waiting for the clock to strike the time when it becomes technically illegal to be there. Then they rushed in and attacked."

I don't think that's the case. The protestors were supposed to be gone by 8pm, but according to the Sentinel, "Police from UCSC and UC Berkeley made 19 arrests for trespassing at 10 p.m. April 18 when protesters refused to leave a giant tent set up at the base of campus on Bay and High streets. Campus administrators said campus policy prohibits overnight camping."

Kirk said: "Telling them to take the protest to the quarry was rediculous. Its a forest in a canyon that's only visable from a rickety old bridge almost nobody uses. Its like people being forced into "Free Speech Zones" when trying to protest a Bush appearance. NOBODY would have seen them, and there's no reason any protestor who actually cared about what they're protesting about would allow themselves to be moved there."

Forrest in a canyon...that's right next to quarry plaza, the center of the campus. The protestors were out all week, and they were allowed at the base of campus for 13 hours/day, which is a total of 65 hours of visibility during their week. It's not quite the same as forcing the entire protest to happen in the quarry. And no one's going to see them at night anyway. And is sleeping really a form of protest? There was a good reason to move the protestors to the quarry at night: the bathroom issue. Where do you think those protestors should have gone to the bathroom at 3am? Do you even care that it would have been unsanitary at the base of campus, and that there could have been health issues? That's especially true if the protestors are cooking (I don't know if they were actually cooking, as I didn't see them doing it, but they were planning to).

Kirk said: "I dont know all the details of what the protestors were fighting for"

neither do they

Kirk said: "it seems to be over money, and if it is, its entirely justified. There is a lot of corruption in the UC Santa Cruz management, going all the way up to the chancellor herself."

agreed

Kirk said: " the chancellor (the same person who had those students assaulted) just created a completely pointless new job on campus for her girlfriend"

Actually, the chancellor didn't create it, the university did. Acording to the sentinel, "Kalonji’s hiring was part of the recruitment package offered to Denton, her partner of seven years."

It's actually not all that unusual for a university to do this. I looked around on the internet, and found something here which states that of US universities, 24% have a formal policy or program for finding jobs for trailing spouses of new hires, and 69% have informal or ad hoc help.

I don't really think it's such a bad thing that the university does this. If Chancellor Denton's partner couldn't find a job in Santa Cruz, it's likely that Denton would have gone elsewhere and not accepted the job. It would have been harder for the university to find someone qualified for the position. And, ya know what, my favorite professor at UCSC has a wife who lives in another state. I think it's sad that they can't be together, and I hope some university gives them both positions (as they're both academics) so that they can be together.

On the other hand, I don't think anyone at the university should be making as much money as Chancellor Denton makes, or even as much as her partner makes, when there are people who are being totally screwed over with low wages.

Kirk said: "I have no idea how it can be illegal for students and campus employees to be on campus"

It's illegal to camp on campus. Ya know, with tents and sleeping bags and all that. I don't think it should really matter if the person doing the camping is a student or a local homeless person. The university has a policy against camping, and it's not their responsibility to run a campground.
 
 
fuckbaked
12:48 / 28.05.05
You have a good point, Haus. I may be oversimplifying things when I state that either the police need to use violence, or they need to just wait around for ages.
So, I guess the question is, “is there a less violent way for the police to arrest protestors who are linking their arms together and trying very hard to resist arrest than by using pressure points?” I suppose it’s probably rather naïve of me to think that the police were using pressure point tactics because it’s a way to subdue people with little likelihood of doing long-term damage to them. It says in the sentinel that, “Campus officials said last week they have no reports of student injuries.”

I don’t know what a better way to arrest the protestors would have been, but I think you’re right that there probably was one. I assume that it would have been somewhat violent (am I just totally uncreative? how do you break a human chain without violence?), so it probably wouldn’t have satisfied some of the people in this thread, but if it’s possible for the police to arrest people in a situation like that while using less violent means, it would be better than what actually happened.

So...what is “reasonable force”?

(Is staying up all night and then posting analogous to posting while drunk? I just tried to read over my post, and my brain just started dreaming.....)
 
 
w1rebaby
17:08 / 28.05.05
It seems to me as if there's a step being skipped there, which is "is it reasonable for the police to arrest these people at all?" From what's being described I'm not convinced that the protestor-poo issue is particularly significant. I'm sure that, given the chance, demonstrators could well have organised some sort of toilet shuttle.
 
 
MJ-12
02:50 / 30.05.05
It's not so much a step being skipped as it is a seperate question altogether. The two pieces of this are really

1) Did the protesters need to be removed? The responsibility for that decision falls on the UC administration.

2) Having been charged with removing the protestors, did the UCPD act in an excessive manner?

I can't speak to the first. As to the second I'm framing this from my own experience. I used to practice Judo, so I've been involved in dozens, probably over a hundred, situations involving chokeholds or pressure submissions on both the giving and receiving sides, so while I'll grant that I may have an unusually blaze attitude to this, I'll also affirm that I'm intimatly familiar with what is involved. Although it certainly looks horrific, and while it is going on is a pain not easily described, nothing that I saw on that video appears to be anything that someone wouldn't be fully recovered from within five to ten minutes. I also attended Cal, and in the early nineties the UCPD's preferred method for dealing with protestors seemed to be baton raps to the shins and collarbones, and in one Peoples' Park protest, rubber bullets, so I'd say this methodology is a rather huge step in the right direction on their part.

Aside comment - in Berkeley at least, the UCPD is (or was then) an entirely different entity than the Berkeley PD.

Semi-aside comment - given that this appeared to be a very methodical and controlled application of force, I don't know that I would characterize it as "violent" at all. Characterizing it as "savage" or "grotesque" seems, from my perspective, absurd.
 
 
astrojax69
05:37 / 30.05.05
It seems to me as if there's a step being skipped there, which is "is it reasonable for the police to arrest these people at all?"

from what i gather in this thread, it is entirely reasonable for the police to arrest the students [method and force used in the arrest notwithstanding]

if there is a legal obligation, however right or wrong that seems to the protestors, or anyone else cogitating on the issue, for the protestors not to be on the school grounds - ergo, commiting trespass - then as the police do not make the laws, merely enforce them, they have an obligation under the terms of their employment contracts to seek to make the arrests. that the offence is inane to the impartial observer is moot and needs be taken up with the appropriate legislative body - big arnie's body??

a matter of poo shuttles does not cover it, i'm afraid.
 
  
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