There can be no argument that the police departments of numerous American cities have had their hands full the last couple of weeks trying to maintain some semblance of civil order in the wake of the dozens of Occupy Wall Street protests. Meted out responses have run the full spectrum; from initially permitting the demonstrators unencumbered access and usage of public and private properties on which to stage their protest, to forcefully banning the continuation of the protest by dismantling their camp sites, with each adopted tactic meeting with varying degrees of acceptance and success.
Equally obvious is the understanding that no law enforcement agency or uniformed police officer is void of the inherent stress in the task of enforcing the laws designed to evenhandedly promote and secure the general welfare of the public. In doing so some individuals rights are going to ultimately be usurped and disenfranchised in order to better serve the greater good. Those select few who are charged with the responsibility "to protect and serve" in such occasions of civil disobedience are going to discover themselves to be caught in a quandary of having to make momentary decisions as to what degree of persuasion is to be brought to bear in the situation presented. For some police officers, as may be evidenced by the many instances where actual filmed footage has documented such confrontations, they are "damned if they do" and equally so if they don't.
Nevertheless, there are times when it is clearly evident that the employment of excessive force has been brought to bear on a situation in which otherwise a lesser means of enforcement would have proved successful in bringing about the desired end result. Such was the case when this past Friday two uniformed police officers, employed by the University of California-Davis, used pepper spray on a small and non-confrontational group of university students who had peacefully assembled for the purpose of expressing their united displeasure with the university's ever-increasing increase in tuition fees. If it may be deemed so, it is a minor blessing that the two officers were only armed with canisters of pepper spray and not assault rifles, as was the case during the so called "Kent State Massacre" in May of 1970 when four unarmed university students were killed and nine others wounded for having the audacity to protest President Nixon's announced escalation of the Viet Nam war. Differences of opinions and diverse ideologies too often have a way of becoming needlessly confrontational when one or more parties bring implements of immediate persuasion to the discussion. Thus was the deplorable case with the UC-Davis police department on Friday.
This personal opinion piece is not intended to support or refute the merits or the lack thereof of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, although strong opinions about the validity and veracity of the movement I do possess. I express only a profound disdain for the inhumane tactics that were employed on the UC-Davis campus. These students, as it is equally true for the current undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in all of our publicly funded universities and colleges in America, are painfully discovering and are having to confront the realization that the goal of acquiring a college education for the vast majority of middle class Americans, as well as those aspiring students who find themselves in lower classifications of economic wherewithal, is becoming more and more a luxury that only the more economically endowed can afford. To be pepper sprayed into accepting that premise as the new normal without the student's legitimate right to peacefully and constructively protest otherwise, if not a crime of unprovoked and unnecessary violence, it ought to be.
Higher education should never devolve into a private right, but be diligently protected and preserved as a public good. Pepper spraying defenceless students is not the manner by which to further that ideal.
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