UNITED STATES

Pepper spray report criticises school leaders, police

University of California – Davis police violated policy and used poor judgment in pepper-spraying student demonstrators in November, while institutional leaders badly bungled the handling of that campus protest, according to a highly critical report released last week, write Larry Gordon and Chris Megerian for the Los Angeles Times.

"Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper-spraying incident that took place on 18 November 2011 should and could have been prevented," said the report by a university-appointed task force chaired by retired state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso.

The long-awaited study strongly rebutted campus police claims that the Occupy demonstrators who had pitched tents on a UC Davis quad posed a violent threat, and said administrators wrongly assumed that many protesters were off-campus troublemakers.
Full report on the Los Angeles Times site