Official and unofficial versions

View 701 Sunday, November 20, 2011

The big flap today is that at UC Davis a bunch of protestors were pepper sprayed. The various on line photos show the campus police simply walking up to the kids and spraying them down; one commentator say the police were nonchalant and acted as if they were spraying insects.

Actually the story isn’t quite that simple. The students were blocking access to the area the officers had been sent to finish cleaning out camping stuff. One of the officers read the riot act – well, the section of the California code that they students were defying – and told them to disperse or move to another area where they were not blocking public access. When that got no response he produced a large can of pepper spray and read the code section again, said that if they did not disperse he would use the pepper spray, and when they responded with silence he methodically sprayed each one (presumably inspired by a desire to be seen to give equal treatment to each?).

Which raises an interesting topic for discussion. The students were not making threats of violence. They were not told they could not assemble, but they were ordered to do it somewhere else. One presumes that the police could have simply started arresting them. Is that what they should have done? Or would it have been acceptable had they used their batons to prod the students? Or –

At what point do the police have the right to remove people from blocking others’ access, and what means are acceptable for accomplishing that result? The law seems pretty clear, and the police complied with the requirement that the demonstrators be made aware that what they were doing was breaking the law, and which law they were violating. At that point what should they have done?

The chancellor of the campus says

"During the early afternoon hours and because of the request to take down the tents, many students decided to dismantle their tents, a decision for which we are very thankful. However, a group of students and noncampus affiliates decided to stay. The university police then came to dismantle the encampment. The events of this intervention have been videotaped and widely distributed. As indicated in various videos, the police used pepper spray against the students who were blocking the way. The use of pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this." http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/uc-davis-police-defend-use-of-pepper-spray-on-protesters.html

It’s not what I would have done had I been in charge because I have not enough information on the effects of pepper spray and possible allergies. The students certainly weren’t doing anything that required instant action or deadly force. On the other hand, the liklihood of someone being injured during a physical arrest is not zero either. The urgency of the police action can be questioned, but surely the Constitution does not give any random group of people the right to sit with locked arms in any public path they choose to occupy.

Would it have been better had the police simply dejnied access to the students by anyone else, and waited until the calls of nature did their work? Perhaps distribution of bottled water to hasten the process?

I am reading SEAL Target Geronimo by Chuck Pfarrer, a retired Navy SEAL described as “assault element commander” of SEAL Team 6. I put it that way because oddly enough I have been unable to find his Navy retirement rank. A Special Ops spokesman, Colonel Tim Nye, says the book is completely untrue. Pfarrer claims his version of the raid is based on interviews with the people who were in on it. Colonel Nye says that the government version is true and Nye is making things up, and probably never talked to any of the team members. We can believe the official version.

There is apparently no question that Mr. Pfarrer is a former SEAL team commander, making him a former member of one of the most formidable outfits in the history of the world. He is honorably retired. He has directly contradicted the President’s version of the raid:

In SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden, Pfarrer, a former SEAL, offers an alternative version of the raid arguing the SEAL team shot bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaida mastermind was holed up.

Pfarrer claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the SEALs look inept. He says President Barack Obama’s speedy acknowledgement of the raid was a political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered on the raid useless.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/navy-seals-controversial-book-not-true-261817

It makes for an interesting study. Of course nothing ever goes according to plan, but the official story does seem to make the SEALs look less competent than most of us think they are. More when I know more.

I have just heard that a recent survey says

One in three college grads said that access to social media sites like Facebook and the ability to choose their own devices was more important to them than salary when considering a job offer. This according to a study of 2,800 college students and young professionals worldwide conducted by Cisco. More than 40% went so far as to say that they would accept less money for a job that was down with social media at work on a device of their choosing if it also included telework.

http://hothardware.com/News/College-Grads-Say-Salary-Is-Less-Important-than-FacebookFriendly-Work-Policies/

Words fail me.