BREAKING UP RIOTS

An article on BBC news from the UK suggests that the Metropolitan Police are considering using CS gas to stop rioters.  It is one of the more 'assertive' ways, they think, to deal with the problem.

Since CS gas was not something with which I was familiar, I used Google.  To see what the military troops were put through testing it, please click here

There are many tools for breaking up riots.  The first step is to determine whether a protest in non-violent among unarmed marchers to make a statement.  It seems that it is not always clear to those who either do not believe in the right to free speech in a non-violent protest march (see this in Russia 3/1/2012) 

As in Tiananmen Square in 1989, massacre is another choice though a democracy would not consider it the best choice.. We have seen pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, brutality, and so many more attempts to control crowds.  It will always be a question whether there is, indeed, a riot or whether it is 'preventive' action so that there won't be one.  Whichever it is, it is a term which should be analyzed carefully when it is used.

I'm shocked that being put on administrative leave is a solution for the outrage of pepper spray on these young people at UC Davis, though the police chief was 'suspended..  To subject them to respiratory damage, damage to their immune systems and neurological difficulties is unconscionable.  Nothing is being mentioned about the training these police staffs need to have, will receive,  not how pepper spray should be removed as a tool available to them.

Pepper spray is not a benign deterrent. It has neurological consequences; no one is clear on the length symptoms remain after being a recipient. People into manipulating pictures have already started having fun with this subject.  The little girl running naked down the street in Viet Nam graphically demonstrates the torture to an already sensitive skin this substance can produce. 

In the last few years our country has become terribly insensitive to cruelty that is inflicted constantly both physically, emotionally, and by denying people those rights which have come to be a part of life in this USA and what used to be a democracy.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Science Writer, Deborah Blum, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, described pepper spray on the Rachel Maddow Show , MSNBC, 11/22.  She said it was above the Scoville Scale of 'heat' by its pure capsaicin composition.

While it may take a long time for cases to go through trial on this subject, Jonathan Turley  law professor,said on an interview that he is heading a case that has been in the courts for ten years already.

WHERE DID OUR DEMOCRACY GO?

Is there no one who goes to the Internet to re-read the Constitution any more?    What has happened to free speech?  Who allows police brutality to unarmed students and protesters? Pepper spraying unarmed students lined up facing the firing squad of police emptying can upon can of pepper spray on them seems to have little is being said by anyone other than the victims.

It is incredible that Chancellor Linda Katehi has such little wisdom as to think that she can stay on her job with any respect for her decision making.  She has irrevocably tarnished the image of the  school to say nothing for student and staff morale. While she immediately called for a task force for an investigation, no one is looking back historically.  Why is it that people allow emotions to steer them from learning from history to prevent repeating the same mistakes which inevitably have the same consequences?

An Opinion article written in the Los Angeles Times says:  "Even if the last major waves of campus protests were a couple of decades ago, quelling student demonstrations without harm and with a minimum of residual outrage should be at the top of university training programs for police staff."

The Chancellor gave a speech of apology and said she was as unhappy with the University that day as were the victims.  However, she did not give anything but lip service to the fact that she was where the buck stopped.  Her people were not well trained nor was she visible while the violation to the students with the pepper spray was going on.  One unarmed student was actually hospitalized.  While I heard some people defending Chancellor Katehi, there were more who seemed to be calling for her resignation with rather compelling reasons.  I guess we will have to stay tuned just as we are regarding the boycott in Congress's attempts to avoid makimg America a better place to hope for a better future and jobs for people.