Law Enforcement

On Tuesday the General Counsel of the University of California, Charles Robinson, along with Michael Risher for the ACLU, submitted their arguments in response to the injunction sought by lawyers for Lt. John Pike and the Federated University Police Officers Association, who filed for an injunction last week to halt the release of the Kroll Investigation Report and any recommendations from the task force headed up by Cruz Reynoso.

In the order signed last week by Judge Grillo, the University of California Board of Regents was ordered “to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not be ordered restraining and enjoining you and your employees and agents… from releasing the Kroll report, from releasing confidential peace officer personnel files, and from violating California Penal Code sections 832.7 and 832.8 regarding the confidentiality of peace officer personnel files.”

Critics Question the Use of Police Bill of Rights in This Case

An Alameda County judge has ordered the University of California to withhold a UC Davis task force report on the pepper-spraying incident at the campus, at least until after a hearing that is scheduled for March 16.

“In granting the temporary restraining order requested by a UC campus police union attorney, Judge Evelio M. Grillo emphasized that he was not ruling on the merits, but only preserving the status quo until the hearing on March 16,” University of California General Counsel Charles Robinson said in a statement to the media on Tuesday.

The university was all set for the Tuesday release of the report from Kroll and the Task Force, however late yesterday UC Davis and the University of California Office of the President announced that the union representing UC campus police and a police officer at the center of the pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis will request a court order to halt public disclosure of a report by a task force headed by former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso.

The request for the temporary restraining order will be presented today in Department 31 of the Alameda County Superior Court.  As a result, Cruz Reynoso, acting on advice from counsel, made the decision to postpone the public release of the report.

The twice pushed-back report will finally be released at noon on March 6. Downloadable task force findings, recommendations and background documents will be available on the UC Davis home page.

Former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso, chair of the task force investigating the pepper-spray incident on Nov. 18, said today (March 2) that the group will outline its findings and recommendations to the UC Davis community – students, faculty and staff – on Tuesday (March 6) from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in the UC Davis Conference Center Ballroom.

On Wednesday, the ACLU announced that nineteen students and alumni filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District against UC Davis, over the university’s treatment of protesters during a Nov. 18 demonstration, in which campus police were caught on video dousing seated protesters with pepper spray.

According to a release from the ACLU, the lawsuit seeks to determine why the university violated the demonstrators’ state and federal constitutional rights, and seeks to result in better policies that will prevent repetition of such response to a non-violent protest.

Written by the UC Davis Dateline Staff

Top UC officials at a UC Davis town hall last Friday on systemwide police practices heard suggestions to disarm campus police units or even disband them altogether. But some who attended the forum raised a question about protester practices: Have they gone too far?

In late January, the Vanguard reported on a letter from former Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso sent to UC President Mark Yudof, indicating there will be delays in the original timeline of the report regarding the pepper-spraying incident at Occupy UCD. The delay meant that Justice Reynoso was then “targeting February 21, 2012 for the release of the report of the Task Force.”

The reason for the delay was that the UC Davis police were not cooperating with the investigation, as the former Justice of the California Supreme Court indicated in a letter to President Yudof, saying that although consulting firm Kroll, Inc., has conducted a number of interviews with students and faculty, they have “not had access to subject and non subject officers.”

The events at UC Riverside, like those in many in the Occupy Movement, caught the attention of the public after police fired rubber bullets and paint ball rounds at the crowd as the students chanted “Peaceful Protest.”

A letter from former Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso sent to UC President Mark Yudof indicates there will be delays in the original timeline. The delay means that Justice Reynoso is now “targeting February 21, 2012 for the release of the report of the Task Force.”

Mr. Reynoso indicates the changes result “primarily from our negotiations with the Federated University Police Officer’s Association (FUPOA) for access to non subject officers.”

A group called Occupy Colleges, fashioning themselves after Occupy Wall Street, has issued a statement denouncing what they are calling the “police shooting and beating of students at UC Riverside.”

In a statement they argue that students were “brutally and unnecessarily injured” at a peaceful demonstration at UC Riverside.

After weeks of quiet, student demonstrations re-emerged in the news.  On the local front came the not-unexpected news that the Yolo District Attorney had declined to file charges against the UCD protesters who were pepper sprayed.

For the most part, the district attorney has declined to involve his office in the politics of student protests.

Chancellor Katehi Issues Another Message on Pepper-Spraying Incident

A group of students from UC Riverside attempted to storm the UC Regents meeting on Thursday, and were confronted by riot police. Numerous YouTube videos showed that they were fired upon with paint-filled bullets and other projectiles that injured several at the scene.

One of the lesser-known features of the Occupy movement is that attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild have embedded themselves with protesters as observers for the next stage of the fight.