At one level, the hiring of Matthew Carmichael to be the Police Chief of the UC Davis Police Department seemed the obvious choice. He had already led the department since those fateful days following the November 18 pepper-spray incident, that led to the suspension of his predecessor and nationwide scrutiny on the department.
Supporters can point to his long record of service and training.
To the surprise of probably no one, Matthew Carmichael was sworn in Thursday to succeed Annette Spicuzza who had retired just one day earlier. Due to the quick turnaround between the resignation of Ms. Spicuzza and the announcement for the new hire, it was clear that the choice would be Mr. Carmichael, a 27-year veteran of law enforcement, with the last 10 years as a lieutenant at UC Davis. He has served as acting chief since Nov. 21.
Ms. Spicuzza had been on administrative leave while the campus conducted an internal affairs investigation into the Nov. 18 pepper-spraying of demonstrators on the Quad.
“My 27 years in law enforcement have been dedicated to the ethical and committed service to the departments and communities I have been proud to be a part of,” the statement read. “For the past seven years, I have accomplished many good things for both the Police Department and community here at UC Davis; and am grateful to those of you who have remembered this.”
Thomas Matzat suffered nerve damage when he was one of 10 arrested for misdemeanors during the camp clearing operation back in November 2011. On Friday, he will be one of 12 arraigned on misdemeanor charges for his bank blocking actions and, reportedly, he will also be arraigned on felony vandalism charges.
Andy Fell, spokesperson for UC Davis, told the Vanguard that “Thomas Matzat, 22, of El Dorado Hills, a UC Davis student, was arrested March 17 on charges of felony vandalism in connection with a series of graffiti incidents on campus.”
The Vanguard has not completed its person-by-person analysis just yet. On Tuesday, Chancellor Katehi made her first public comment on the release of the report.
Once again, she said she accepted “full responsibility” for the pepper spray incident and she made promises about changes to ensure “something like this does not happen again.”
As Kroll aptly notes, Lt. John Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became the face and image of the pepper spray incident. “The image of Lieutenant John Pike spraying the activists has gone beyond viral to the point of being iconic, with Lieutenant Pike’s image inserted into videos, cartoons, famous paintings, etc,” Kroll writes.
Ultimately, the report by both Kroll and the Reynoso Task Force put the primary culpability on Lt. Pike, at least with regard to the decision to use pepper spray on the protesters in the Quad on November 18, 2011.
It was a statement that certainly jumped out of at us as we read the report by the Reynoso Task Force and Kroll. The statement made by John Meyer seemed like a statement from another time.
He explained, “Our context at the time was seeing what’s happening in the City of Oakland, seeing what’s happening in other municipalities across the country, and not being able to see a scenario where [a UC Davis Occupation] ends well . . . “
In a sweeping irony on a number of fronts, the administrator who emerges from the pepper-spray debacle looking the best is Assistant Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro. The would-be hero was ultimately unable to prevail upon the Leadership Team, in terms of determining the actual make-up of the Occupiers, composed almost entirely of students, and ultimately her pleas for patience were disregarded.
This is greatly ironic because a year ago at this time, Griselda Castro was having to explain to the public the function of the Activism Response Team, the very team that students and civil rights were decrying in fear of infiltration.
David Buscho was not hopeful that the investigation would yield the kinds of findings he saw as needed, but he said, “I think now that a reputable organization like the ACLU is here [and] is involved in representing the interests of the students, I think that now we can actually say that [the university will move in the right direction to rectify the situation].”
As the Kroll investigators note, “Without the legal authority to demand that the tents be removed, the police lose the legal authority for much of what subsequently transpired on November 18, including the issuance of an order to disperse and the declaration of an unlawful assembly.”
Chancellor Linda Katehi perhaps has a brief window of time to act in order to save her job and in order to take advantage of the consensus for change, despite the vote of confidence she received from Cruz Reynoso on Thursday.
On Friday, Chancellor Katehi acknowledged the problems that the campus faces in a statement, “The Reynoso task force report illuminated clearly and sharply the need for major reform of campus police operations and better coordination, collaboration and communication within the UC Davis administration and with the broader university community.”
Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza was played on paid administrative leave shortly after the pepper spray incident went down on November 18, 2011. The question now is what will happen to her.
Six of the 12 students facing charges for bank blocking in the Memorial Union were either pepper sprayed or arrested on November 18, according to one protester involved in both incidents. By itself, this could simply mean that the same people involved in the bank-blocking incident were heavily involved in the November 18 protests.
The students, however, believe otherwise, that the bank-blocking prosecution is simply an extension of the pepper-spray incident and is the university’s retribution for their involvement on the Quad.
While legislators such as Speaker John Perez and the always-outspoken Senator Leland Yee, along with Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, immediately responded to the report, Davis’ own legislators took a more reflective and reserved approach.
Finally, on Thursday afternoon, both Assemblymember Mariko Yamada and Senator Lois Wolk issued statements on their reaction to the reports from Cruz Reynoso and his Task Force and from the Kroll Team.
Despite the pepper-spray incident and ensuing media frenzy, largely staying out of the limelight was Vice Chancellor John Meyer. This despite the fact that the vice chancellor is the direct line supervisor to the police chief in the UC Davis organizational chart.
Earlier this week, the police union’s attorney, John Bakhit, threw a curveball to those eagerly awaiting the release of the pepper-spray report when he told the local newspaper that Reynoso’s report was “going to surprise a lot of people.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso was stark, critical and to the point on Wednesday afternoon during the long-awaited release of the pepper-spray report – and the Justice did not hold back when describing his frustration with the problems of portions of the Penal Code known commonly as the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights.
While there was no shortage of opinions on the pepper-spray report that, in the words of Cruz Reynoso on Wednesday afternoon was “finally” released, there was a remarkable lack of comment by local public officials. Whether it was the volume of the material or the nature of that material, it is difficult to say.
UC President Mark Yudof on Wednesday indicated that, like many others, that he had not read the full report.
Task Force and Kroll Find Pepper Spray Not a Reasonable Use of Force; Hammers Chancellor and Lt. Pike –
The findings of the long-awaited Pepper-Spray Report are basic and succinctly summarized in the introduction: “The pepper-spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.” They find that “the decision to use pepper spray was not supported by objective evidence and was not authorized by policy.”
The report paints a damning picture of the university’s response to the protests from the top to the bottom, including indecisiveness by Chancellor Katehi and an unreasonable use of force by Lt. John Pike.
John Bakhit, who represents Lt. John Pike and the Federated University Police Officers Association, suddenly broke his silence and indicated the Reynosos report was “going to surprise a lot of people,” in an article in the local newspaper that will be published today.
The question we are now left to ponder in the hours before the actual report is released is whether Mr. Bakhit is giving us a sneak preview of what is in the report, or his preemptive strike trying to diffuse what many believe will be a very critical assessment of what occurred on November 18.
