John Pike, infamous pepper-sprayer of UC Davis students on November 18th, 2011, has been fired. But not before UC Davis Police Internal Affairs and the UC Davis Police Union rose up with a stirring defense of his aerosol assault.
An open letter from the UC Davis Police Union states
... the investigation found that Lieutenant Pike was justified with his use of pepper spray under the circumstances. The ((UC Davis Police)) internal affairs investigation did not recommend discipline for Lieutenant Pike due to the use of force issue... we do not approve of the decision to disregard the findings... as it relates to Lieutenant Pike's termination."
Not only did Internal Affairs reach the conclusion that Pike should not be fired because of the spraying, but so did a review panel!
Next, however, a panel comprised of a UC Davis police captain and the campus chief compliance officer reviewed the report and issued its own recommendations.
They recommended, according to the Bee, "an exonerated finding as to the charge alleging that Lt. Pike's use of force may have been excessive under the circumstances."
It seems that the main reason for Pike's recent firing by Chief Carmichel was not the use of massive amounts of pepper spray on defenseless, inert, students in a manner totally inconsistent with procedures...
Human a la pepper sauce, prepared by chef Pike
but rather because
The Operation caused damage to the campus and the Department...
Yup. Who could have guessed that the current police chief would care more about the reputation of the college and his department than the students he is supposed to be looking out for?
Pike himself continued to defend his actions to his superiors. Carmichel wrote
One of the key factors ((leading to his firing)) is Lt. Pike's insistence that he would have performed the same actions if faced again with the same circumstances.
Thereby, presumably, embarassing Katehi again.
The Police Union does make a good point in its letter:
To this day, not one University Administrator has been demoted or terminated due to their decisions, which placed our police officers and the students of this university into an unnecessary and foreseeable confrontation.
Let's be clear. Everyone up and down the chain of command from Pike to Chancellor Katehi should have been summarily fired on November 19th, 2011.
But there is no reason other than the police code of silence -- never admitting a fellow officer could do anything wrong and never being willing to say that a colleague is unfit to be a police officer -- that Internal Affairs should have come to the conclusions they did or that the police union or anyone else should have defended that conclusion.
We knew all this from the onset, but it only reinforces the conclusion that The UC Davis Police and all but perhaps a handful of other police departments do not protect and serve any group other than themselves.
11:52 AM PT: Instead of pepper spray, how about slamming your face into a car?