Pepper-spray video prompts probe

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

Video surfaced online Saturday showing an officer at a California university calmly pepper-spraying a line of several sitting protesters, who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, described the video images as “chilling” and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the incident Friday.

“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s website Saturday.

The protest was in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, who were jabbed by police with batons Nov. 9.

The UC Davis video images, which were circulated on YouTube and widely online, prompted immediate outrage among faculty and students, with the Davis Faculty Association saying in a letter Saturday that Katehi should resign.

“The chancellor’s role is to enable open and free inquiry, not to suppress it,” the faculty association said in its letter.