The BBC wasn’t impressed: US university investigates campus pepper spray use.

The CBC article includes a quote from a fool:

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said after reviewing the video.

What part of ‘if you pepper-spray someone they are incapacitated and must be carried’ don’t you understand Lt. Kelly. The threat of pepper spray might get you ‘compliance’, but the actual use generally makes people unable to comply.

With Corrente still down, Lambert popped up at Naked Capitalism with a blow-by-blow account of the most common of the videos of the incident. Lots of information in the comments thread.

Now, CNN is reporting: California campus police on leave after pepper-spraying

(CNN) — The University of California at Davis has placed two police officers on administrative leave after video of them pepper-spraying non-violent protesters at point-blank range sparked outrage at school officials.

Friday’s incident has led to calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who announced the action in a written statement Sunday. Katehi said she shares the “outrage” of students and was “deeply saddened” by the use of the chemical irritant by campus police.

As a general rule you should never make your boss look bad if you want to keep your job, so you can imagine the effect of having your boss’s boss’s boss being besieged with calls for her resignation because of your actions.

Ms Katehi is Greek and received her undergraduate degree at the University of Athens during the dictatorship of the colonels. That she has allowed this to happen at UC Davis is mystifying. It is as if she learned nothing about dealing with student protests from her experience. The reaction when students were attacked, a regular feature of life under the colonels, was never compliance with the rules, but an escalation of tactics.