This is like the cotton swab case. "The jury awarded each plaintiff only $1."

I think I would ask that a judge act as the trier of fact rather than a panel of jurors.

The alternative is to simply take them into custody and book them for some sort of charge.

Then again, if I could get a big award for enduring a little pepper spray for a short period of time then it might be worth it, in the long run.

http://youtu.be/8775ZmNGFY8

Here's what a shaming looks like. Well done, kids.

As my Russian friend reminds me: The fish rots from the head.

what did the officer do wrong?

Officers in pepper spray incident placed on leave| AP – 12 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in the pepper spraying of seated protesters were placed on administrative leave Sunday, as the school's chancellor accelerated an investigation of the incident and made plans to meet with protesters amid calls for her resignation.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said she has been inundated with reaction from alumni, staff, students and faculty over the incident Friday in which a riot gear-clad officer fires pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators. The protesters flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

Full report by Jason Dearden:
http://news.yahoo.com/officers-pepper-spray-incident-placed-leave-182151195.html

After watching the video, how can anyone ask what the officer did that was wrong?

Quote from the article:
"However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force "fairly standard police procedure."

Well, maybe the official answer is... "nothing".

More on Police Departments' Collusion in Defense of 1%: Who's the Organization Coordinating Those Crackdown Calls?
By Geov Parrish | Booman Tribune (via AlterNet)

Interesting report this evening in the San Francisco Bay Guardian suggesting that big city mayors have not been the only ones making conference calls in an effort to coordinate crackdowns on Occupy Movement encampments:

The White House says there’s no federal oversight. Speaking November 15 aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said “The president’s position is that obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues.”

But a little-known but influential private membership based organization has placed itself at the center of advising and coordinating the crackdown on the encampments. The Police Executive Research Forum, an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs to advise them on policing matters and discuss response to the Occupy movement. The group has distributed a recently published guide on policing political events.

Speaking to Democracy Now! On November 17, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler acknowledged PERF's coordination of a series of conference-call strategy sessions with big-city police chiefs. These calls were distinct from the widely reported national conference calls of major metropolitan mayors.

****

As the occupation movement grew, PERF began circulating a publication titled Managing Major Events: Best Practices from the Field. The manual – a copy of which we downloaded -- amounts to a how-to guide for policing political events, and gives special attention to policing “Anarchists” and “Eco Terrrorists” at political events.

The guide encourages the use of undercover officers and snatch squads to “grab the bad guys and remove them from the crowd.” It urges local law enforcement to use social media to map the Occupy movement.

An earlier PERF guide Police Management of Mass Demonstrations advocates the use of embedded media to control police messages, the use of undercover cops to infiltrate protest groups, the use and pitfalls of preemptive mass arrest, an examination of the use of less-than-lethal crowd control weapons, and general discussion weighing the use of force in crowd control.

Read more
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/11/18/cop-group-coordinating-occupy-crackdowns

Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Excessive Use of Force amidst the New Military Urbanism -- Democracy Now! (Nov. 17, 2011 broadcast)

We host a discussion on policing and the Occupy Wall Street movement with Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which helped organize calls among police chiefs on how to respond to the Occupy protests, and with Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, who recently wrote an article for The Nation magazine titled "Paramilitary Policing from Seattle to Occupy Wall Street." [includes rush transcript]

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/17/paramilitary_policing_of_occupy_wall_street

Well, this movement might actually develop into something powerful.

It's showing all the signs of gaining strength when we start seeing this sort of police brutality showing up.

No Escape From The Police State!

More police departments look to tune public out

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police departments around the country are working to shield their radio communications from the public as cheap, user-friendly technology has made it easy for anyone to use handheld devices to keep tabs on officers responding to crimes.

The practice of encryption has grown more common from Florida to New York and west to California, with law enforcement officials saying they want to keep criminals from using officers' internal chatter to evade them. But journalists and neighborhood watchdogs say open communications ensure that the public receives information that can be vital to their safety as quickly as possible.

More at http://news.yahoo.com/more-police-departments-look-tune-public-164612792.html

I really could care less what happens to these people as they, like the folk in Detroit, Portland, or San Francisco, established themselves in a different country long ago.

What police forces are doing there- well it's like Vietnam, should never have been there in the first place.

But, when you send them in what do you expect? Let's say these idiot sitters have been told they don't have the right to sit there (much like the idiots in Portland were told to stay on the sidewalk).

Do you use 3 to 5 officers to drag each creep away? Meanwhile, 3 to 5 of their idiot creep friends hurry in to harass and attack the officers? Look at the so approach of local cops top the idiots on the Portland sidewalk. The occupy idiots claw at the officers, swear at them, throw crap at them, take names so they can torment the their sin their private lives.

Anyway, say the officers, sans pepper spray, get this absolutely thankless task and succeed in manhandling each baby away. Next, you've got 10 to 40 cases in court along with spin- off litigation from pro-bono freedom fighting attorneys.

10,000 to a million dollars later these idiots settle out of court and etc. Taxpayers finance all of this of course. Broke taxpayers. Crikey, if an officer had jerked a shoulder out of socket moving one of these idiots along - how loud would you cry at the constitution being trampled?

Any thing the cops do is a war crime. A crime of imperialism. So, don't do anything.
To hell with the merchants in the community or the students trying to carry on regular studies and lives. Let the indigenous people do it themselves. Appeal to their shaman.

Let the merchants and the occupiers establish and maintain their own constabulary in matters like this.

No, here in Portland and at these other occupy towns the cops should just abandon them to police themselves. We'd all be better off.

If I were a cop I'd do nothing at all. I'd sit in my base and wait to go home. Who wants to be the guy, the sucker this whole mess has been looking to create - the last guy that catches it?

Here in Portland and around the country these occupy idiots haven't got their Kent State moment, the pepper spray will have to do. Well, Davis and Portland have their brave martyrs now and you love 'em. They're the ones you've been waiting for so go ahead and howl.

If you think those college kids deserved to be pepper sprayed, there's really no hope for you. And if you can't express yourself without calling people idiots, you need to find a different forum for your rants.

Occupy the Agenda
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/kristof-occupy-the-agenda.html?_r=1

EXCERPT:

Research by the Economic Mobility Project, which explores accessibility to the American dream, suggests that the United States provides less intergenerational mobility than most other industrialized nations do. That’s not only because of tax policy, which is what liberals focus on. Perhaps even more important are educational investments, like early childhood education, to try to even the playing field. We can’t solve inequality unless we give poor and working-class kids better educational opportunities.

The Occupy movement is also right that one of the drivers of inequality (among many) is the money game in politics. Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who shares a concern about rising inequality, told me that we’ve seen “an evolution from one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.”

James M. Stone, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a recent speech that many members of Congress knew that banks needed to be more tightly regulated, perhaps broken into smaller pieces.

“So why was this not done?” he asked. “One obvious piece of the answer is that both political parties rely heavily on campaign contributions from the financial sector.”

The solution to these inequities and injustices is not so much setting up tents at bits of real estate here or there, but a relentless focus on the costs of inequality. So as we move into an election year, I’m hoping that the movement will continue to morph into: Occupy the Agenda.

P.S. ~ We need to Occupy School Boards, too because they've long been captivated and run their own version of a disabling, money-wasting, ol'-boy & ol' gal self-serving nincompoop agenda "for the children."

If you think those college kids deserved to be pepper sprayed...

Oh. heaven forfend....

college kids...

a "class" apart?

lal..what did the officer do wrong? Watch the video ONCE and then re-ask the question. The police officers who did this should be thrown in jail for assault. This is a disgusting display of abuse of power. The Chancellor should resign as well..she's clearly unable to look out for the safety of the students or control her staff.

college kids... a "class" apart?

Yes. They are college students, under 21, engaged in a sit-in on their own college campus. For campus cops to pepper spray them is nothing short of obscene.

Campus cops shouldn't even have pepper spray. What goons.

Caught on Camera: 10 Shockingly Violent Police Assaults on Occupy Protesters
Probably 97 percent of police act professionally toward protesters. But the other 3 percent are armed and dangerous, and know that they're unlikely to be held accountable.
By Joshua Holland
http://www.alternet.org/story/153134/caught_on_camera%3A_10_shockingly_violent_police_assaults_on_occupy_protesters?page=entire

(Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of "The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America")

When asked, "Well what were the cops to do?" My answer in this case is, "Stay home."
Really. They weren't needed. No one was being harmed or threatened. I have a hard time figuring out legally or morally how protesting and sitting and what not can be busted up by the police/military.
It's important to be able to assemble and protest, scream, make a racket and generally be an annoyance. This is how democracy works sometimes. I'm trying to think of the author that said, "Democracy is noisy. Sometimes."
I can't figure out how the first amendment, something enshrined in our constitution and supposedly a pillar of our culture, gets circumvented so easily by citing lower level throw away laws like blocking foot traffic, sleeping outdoors and smelling like an arm pit.
None of these people are half as annoying as the people I see running for political office right now.
End Rant.