Seriously. If you're going to lie, at least come up with a plausible one that isn't disputed by the video evidence. The cops had to use the pepper spray to escape? That's not true. They didn't shoot it at the perimeter, where they would shoot it if they were trying to escape - they shot it at a dozen kids sitting on the ground in front of them. How did that facilitate their escape? This is a lie. From Jason Cherkis:
Claudia Morain, a UC Davis spokesperson, told The Huffington Post that there were 35 police officers on the scene, 50 occupiers and 200 bystanders.Go back to my original post. Watch the video.
She said that UC Davis officials had warned the occupiers that they could not set up a tent city. They were given notice that they had to clear out their tents by 3 p.m. on Friday. Some complied. Others did not.
"I can't speak for the thought process for the officer," Morain noted about the use of pepper spray. She said that the officers were essentially trapped (the videos suggest otherwise) and had to transport several of the arrested students. "The pepper spray was used because they needed to get out of there," she said, emphasizing that the students were repeatedly warned before the spray was deployed.
Look at the photo of the cops pepper spraying the students - he sure doesn't look like he's desperately trying to escape. Look at this photo, and this photo, both taken right before the kids got pepper sprayed. Do the cops look like they're surrounded and trying to escape for their lives? No. As Jason Cherkis of HuffPost notes, the video makes it clear that the cops weren't surrounded. And they weren't in fear for their lives. They casually sauntered around pepper spraying these kids in the face.
A lot of people need to be fired, including this liar of a spokesperson.
Wait a minute, there's another lie here. The police spokeswoman said last night that the cops had to pepperspray the kids because the crowd was unruly and surrounding them and they were afraid for their safety (so instead of pepper spraying the people surrounding them they chose some kids sitting on the ground doing nothing). The university spokeswoman seems to now be claiming that they did it because they had to get the injured students to the medical care and couldn't get away from the circle of students (which the video shows to be untrue). So which one is it? Why does the story keep changing? It's one cop, Officer Pike, how many different stories are they getting out of this guy?
