Off-Topic Column: Will We Ever Learn?

UCD-COD-Occ-Comp

Occupy This: Will We Ever Learn?

One of the most riveting moments of the civil rights movement was when Bull Connor turned the firehoses and attack dogs on protesters.  It galvanized public sympathy and support for the civil rights movement.

After that, officials, at least those with a semblance of self-control, quickly realized that reacting in such a heavy-handed manner actually bolsters the message of the protesters, creating attention for the issue and sympathy.  Smart leaders allow the protesters to say their piece, which is, after all, a First Amendment right, and be done.  That is, so long as there is no real danger to public safety.

The City of Davis actually heeded that message and let people take up residence in the park.  Few paid attention to it.

But when students and others took up residence on the UC Davis Quad, UC apparently thought the best way to deal with it, was to enforce their rules and clear the Quad.  And now we have pictures of peaceful protesters getting maced and pepper-sprayed.  I think at some point, UC Officials will regret their decision and realize that they should have been more patient.

Fine, they broke the law, or at least the UC Davis rules – but were they really so much of a threat to public safety that you can justify the use of force and the bad publicity this will create?

UC Davis was not alone in overreacting.  Just as the Occupy Movement was about to die, we had a crackdown across the country.  Oakland Mayor Jean Quan admitted that there was a coordinated effort by cities to crack down on encampments.  The situation in Oakland is bad enough that there are federal suits, and officials who had to resign.

Will we ever learn?  Probably not.

Will We Ever Learn Part II – City Attorney Harriet Steiner

I actually like Harriet Steiner.  I think for the most part she is a good attorney.  But she seems to have, at times, an awful blind spot.  A lot of people focus on the ZipCar fiasco, but that one has not cost the city.

The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) decision is going to cost the city $800,000.  Now the city has released their protest of the PERB decision, which means that they are going to fight the proceedings.  One problem that exists with having an outside city attorney is that the pay is by the hour.  And when the attorney’s advice goes awry, the attorney gets paid to defend the city in court.

Some cities have actually separated the duties of those who advise from those who litigate, because there is actually a pretty clear-cut conflict of interest there.

Then we have the water referendum debacle.  The city released, the day after the water referendum qualified, an opinion from the city attorney, who believes that a referendum cannot overturn a Prop 218 decision.

Harriet Steiner acknowledges there is a lack of case law, “We  must note that there are no post-Proposition 218 cases that are directly on point.”

Her argument is that the absence of reference to referendum in Prop 218 suggests a continuation of prior case law.

As I argued, taking a step back, whether the city feels it legal or not, it is a dangerous idea to hide behind, at best, a loophole in the law to deny a sizable number of citizens what they clearly want – a vote.

I rarely agree with the poster Mr. Toad, but he not only hit the nail on the head, but he had the line of the week.

He wrote: “I’m for better water, always have been. But it is clearly the right of the people to make the wrong decision. Being on the wrong side of the right to have this vote is a career killer. Voting not to have the election is a political obituary. The vote will happen one way or another, obstructing it only hurts the chances of the project going forward when the final vote comes down.”

He continued: “Why is there no case law? Obviously, its because nobody has been stupid enough to deny a petition that qualified.”

We have a winner.

Will We Ever Learn Part III – Topete

Congratulations are in order for District Attorney Jeff Reisig, who accomplished this week what everyone knew would be accomplished on June 15, 2008 or at least by June 18, 2008 – he got a convicted cop-killer the death penalty.

It only took him three and a half years, at the cost likely to exceed well over $1 million, with numerous missteps and fiascos to get that sentence. A sentence that means that, instead of being in solitary confinement for the rest of his life at the SHU in Pelican Bay at the cost of $50,000 a year, he will be in solitary on death row in San Quentin for $90,000 a year for the rest of his life.

That is, if we do not vote to end the death penalty next year.

There is no doubt that Marco Topete shot and killed Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz.  None.  It was caught on video and he confessed.

This will not be one of those cases that we are questioning in 15 years.  In fact, this is a case that only people like me, who are hardcore anti-death penalty, will disagree with.  But to me that makes it all the more urgent that we end the death penalty because of the absurdity of it all.

The coup de grace is that it is possible that they did not have 12 jurors – handpicked and death-qualified (meaning they exclude all people like me) – to support the death penalty.

Juror No.11 sent the Court a hand-written note asking to be excused from further deliberation and replaced with an alternate juror.

Juror 11 wrote, “Your Honor: I was raised in foreign country and it is very difficult for me to make a dessision from point of view of this country. I tried my best, but now I see that I am dragging other juries down. I am asking you to replace me by alternative juror, please.”

Judge Richardson made the decision to remove the juror.  As biased as the local media has been against Mr. Topete, not one of them could find a legal scholar who thought this was the right decision.

We talked to Natasha Minsker of the ACLU, who said: “The Judge and the Prosecutor have made a huge mistake.  If the juror was not competent for the penalty phase, then she was not competent for the guilt phase.”

“They have made it very likely that the guilt [verdict] will be reversed,” she added.

You can call her biased, but then you have to look past almost identical views expressed by legal experts in the Davis Enterprise, Sacramento Bee and Daily Democrat.

For a case where there was never any doubt as to who did it, they can’t help stepping in it – over and over again. This case should have been sent out of county, but they wanted to get the death penalty – that would never be imposed.

Congratulations Captain Ahab, you have caught your white whale.  Now what.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

Related posts

27 Comments

  1. Ethan Ireland

    I recall from my own training as a adjunct to a CSU police department, a peace officer or police associate may only use a level of force appropriate to the threat presented. These students may have been in violation of the law and may have been a nuisance, but their nonviolent behavior certainly did not present a physical threat to the officers in question and certainly nowhere near a threat sufficient to motivate the use of riot control chemicals. The casual hosing-down of nonviolent protestors with pepper spray was an abuse of force, plain and simple.

    As seen in the video, the protestors were not cooperating, but they were clearly not resisting. The police could have simply removed, arrested and cuffed each of the individuals sitting in a line, because — as training manuals dictate — visual threat of force by armed officers is considered a level of force. The presence of riot-armed police was already clearly serving as a sufficient deterrent to the students on the quad.

    On the whole, I am disturbed by the increasingly casual attitude toward the use of violence by peace officers and other law enforcement representatives. I was repeatedly told in my training that once any level of force beyond a visual threat is employed, one must be prepared for people to be killed or crippled. For example, the individual shot in the back by the BART PD officer in Oakland in 2009. The individual had *already* been cuffed and restrained, but the officer decided he was going to employ his taser on a cuffed, restrained and unresisting suspect — and that officer mistakenly drew his sidearm and killed the suspect. Although the officer was not convicted of murder, the fact that his reflex response was to employ a taser excessively speaks to the militarization of law enforcement philosophy. Another example that didn’t get much coverage by the media was a similar abuse of tasers by UCLAPD to remove nonviolent (but uncooperative) protestors at the UCLA library in 2007. UCLAPD affixed taser wires affixed to the nonviolent protestors, tased them, and then instructed them to “comply or you will be tased again.” The individuals were basically tortured into compliance — but we as a society have become so inured to brutality that no news agency I’m aware of considered the story to be worth reporting.

    It is my opinion that the abuse of force by the UCDPD officer depicted in the video could be described as torture. The officer who engaged in so casual a display of excessive force is a disgrace to his department and a disgrace to California peace officers. I fervently hope he, and those who enabled him, will be dismissed in shame.

  2. Michael Harrington

    David, that photo of the UCD police officer pepper spraying kids sitting on the ground heads down is amazing, and very inflammatory to those of us who were not there. THanks for covering this sad event. I am a 1984 graduate of UCD, Sociology BA, and find my alma mater’s conduct very disturbing.

    Topete: yep, how can a juror be good enough for conviction, and insufficient for the penalty vote? Jeff: you really screwed the pooch on this one. Reversal in your fortune cards for sure. And you cost our county upwards of $1 million for such poor lawyering?

  3. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]Oakland Mayor Jean Quan admitted that there was a coordinated effort by cities to crack down on encampments. The situation in Oakland is bad enough that there are federal suits, and officials who had to resign.[/quote]

    Totally different situation than UC Davis. In Oakland the protesters turned violent. They actually tried to burn an entire building down…

  4. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]Some cities have actually separated the duties of those who advise from those who litigate, because there is actually a pretty clear-cut conflict of interest there.[/quote]

    EXCELLENT POINT…

  5. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]This will not be one of those cases that we are questioning in 15 years. In fact, this is a case that only people like me, who are hardcore anti-death penalty, will disagree with. But to me that makes it all the more urgent that we end the death penalty because of the absurdity of it all.[/quote]

    This is precisely why the Topete case is not a good one to use to justify doing away w the death penalty – it is not a sympathetic case…

  6. hpierce

    Re: part II:
    On an earlier thread someone said that the City Attorney’s job is to look out for the taxpayers… if that is rigorously true, we need to change our codes to provide for the direct election of the City Attorney, completely independent of the City Council. Currently, the City Council is charged with looking out for the residents of the city (whether they are taxpayers or not). The City Council can hire/fire only two employees (who are “at will”). That would be the City Manager & the City Attorney. In turn, the city manager can dismiss certain management positions which are “at will”. It’s a bit more complicated… technically, BB&K is retained to provide services as “City Attorney”. For ~26 years, the firms retained to provide these services have used Ms Steiner to be “City Attorney”. The Council can elect to maintain the status quo, can ask BB&K to appoint another attorney, or can choose to find another firm who would provide an attorney to carry out this function, or hire an “in-house” attorney. The latter was the norm for the City until ~ 1985, as I recall… and is the absolutely stupidest, least economic choice the City Council could make. My listed options are in the ‘rank order’ I’d personally recommend. The attorney who currently acts as City Attorney, in my opinion, will continue to be employed by, and valued by BB&K and their clients, no matter which option the Council may choose.

  7. AdRemmer

    Ethan Ireland opined: [quote]a peace officer or police associate may only use a level of force appropriate to the threat presented. [/quote]

    FYI, that statement is not quite the legal standard.

  8. AdRemmer

    EI also indicated: [quote]the protestors were…clearly not resisting. [/quote]

    Why would you make such an assertion? You truly aren’t trying to say that resisting arrest is only physically manifested, are you?

  9. AdRemmer

    EI – [quote]as training manuals dictate — visual threat of force by armed officers is considered a level of force. [/quote]

    You must mean the physical presence of the officers…

    and don’t forget…the officer’s verbal instructions/directives…

    If so, may I presume you would understand that, here, the ‘protestors’ failed to heed both – ergo isn’t it true that the next level of force would be “Touch?”

  10. AdRemmer

    EI also writes: [quote]Although the officer was not convicted of murder, the fact that his reflex response was to employ a taser excessively speaks to the militarization of law enforcement philosophy[/quote]

    Nevertheless, many (using DG’s definition) would not agree with your mischaracterization…

  11. medwoman

    Noreen

    I am wondering how many of the “bums, slackers, bored students and outright thugs” you have spoken with personally to be comfortable making such a sweeping characterization?

  12. David M. Greenwald

    Noreen is trying to bait us on a secondary point that is actually irrelevant. The analogy here between tactics and countertactics is relevant whether you like or dislike either group.

  13. Superfluous Man

    AdRemmer,

    “If so, may I presume you would understand that, here, the ‘protestors’ failed to heed both – ergo isn’t it true that the next level of force would be ‘Touch?'”

    Thus, the officer’s use of pepper spray in this situation was justifiable? Why do you think they (or he) chose to pepper spray them as opposed to going directly to placing the protestors in physical restraints? In the video, it appears as though some officers were about to do the latter, before being ordered to stop by the officer who pepper sprayed them.

  14. rusty49

    I think what the officers were doing was trying to get the girl out of there so she wouldn’t have to get pepper sprayed. It looked to me like the rest of the law breakers were men.

  15. justoutsidetown

    “Oakland Mayor Jean Quan admitted that there was a coordinated effort by cities to crack down on encampments.”

    You got to ask: Coordinated by WHO ??

    Answer: the elite 1% that own this country and their Homeland Security Apparatchicks, thats who. They are intent on destroying rights and replacing them with revocable ‘privileges’.. thats what.
    Wake up people.

  16. rusty49

    “the elite 1% that own this country and their Homeland Security Apparatchicks, thats who. They are intent on destroying rights and replacing them with revocable ‘privileges’.. thats what.
    Wake up people.”

    Do you really think Quan is at the behest of the “elite 1%” as you put it? If anything she has been very sympathetic to the Oakland Occupy movement. I think, and it has been reported, that the order for the crackdown came from Washington. Many Democrats have come out publicly in support of the Occupiers and they now know that it is hurting them politically. They now want to squash it as stealthly as they can.

  17. Don Shor

    rusty’s assertion is being promulgated by right-wing zealot Roger Hedgecock (former mayor of San Diego, indicted for conspiracy and perjury, convicted of a felony, now a radio talk-show host), and left-wing zealot Michael Moore. It is based on an Examiner article that links it all to a conference call by 18 big-city mayors with the DHS. Somehow they all think this means Obama ordered the crackdown for political reasons.

  18. Ethan Ireland

    @AdRemmer: To quote from from the University of California’s University-wide Police Policies and Administrative Procedures: “Chemical agents are weapons used to minimize the potential for injury to officers, offenders, or other persons. [b]They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.”[/b] [emphasis mine]

    Any more questions or are you willing to concede your point yet?

  19. Frankly

    [i]”Chemical agents are weapons used to minimize the potential for injury to officers, offenders, or other persons.”[/i]

    Listen to the interview of Chancelor.

    [url]http://youtu.be/ZxsIj4LFfa4[/url]

    The police were called in because the UC brass wanted them removed. They didn’t want them there overnight. There was concern over the potential for injury or worse. There were also outsiders in the group… not just UCD students.

    So, what if the police just left the people there like so many suggest was a good idea, and someone was seriously injured, raped or killed like has happened with several other occupy crowds? I’m sure we would be hearing your moral outrage over the fact that the cops didn’t do enough to prevent it.

  20. Ethan Ireland

    @Jeff Boone: Advocating for police brutality in contravention to [b]their own[/b] policies and procedures because a violent crime [i]might[/i] happen makes about as much sense as deploying the National Guard into a New York City because violent crimes [i]might[/i] happen. Sure, a [i]few[/i] violent crimes happened in a [i]few[/i] Occupy camps around the world. Get enough people together in one place and you’re bound to end up with at least one sociopath in the mix. Crimes happen where people are. But the way you’re arguing, it seems to me the equivalent would be like saying we should be morally outraged the entire United States is still an operational entity because we have had more than one serial killer operating within our national boundaries in the 20th Century.

    Was there a legitimate concern over safety? I don’t think so, but I’m not in their shoes. However, if the UC police & administration were truly concerned about safety & risk of injury as opposed to making an iron-fisted example of those who defied them, they any number of other nonviolent ways they could have handled the problem of quad-campers that wouldn’t have brought either international bad press or surrendered the moral imperative to the Occupiers. The [i]smart[/i] thing would have been to issue hefty littering tickets every 12 hours they failed to remove the tents. I guarantee you that between fat tickets, the current cold weather, impending finals & Thanksgiving weekend, those campers would have largely been gone. Any hardcore Occupiers still remaining could have been arrested (nonviolently) for trespassing.

    Finally, saying the equivalent of “well, other cops did it elsewhere in the country” is as much a pathetic excuse as saying “well, other kids were doing it so why couldn’t I?”

  21. E Roberts Musser

    Since this is an “off topic” column – just thought I would let readers know that the FBI will be investigating at Penn State University as far back as 1970’s when Sandusky first started The Second Mile group foster home/youth camp…

  22. dgrundler

    [quote]Judge Richardson made the decision to remove the juror. As biased as the local media has been against Mr. Topete, not one of them could find a legal scholar who thought this was the right decision.[/quote]

    None of them knows what happened in the jury deliberation room.

    [quote]We talked to Natasha Minsker of the ACLU, who said: “The Judge and the Prosecutor have made a huge mistake. If the juror was not competent for the penalty phase, then she was not competent for the guilt phase.”

    “They have made it very likely that the guilt [verdict] will be reversed,” she added.[/quote]

    This is completely absurd. This conviction will not be overturned, at least not for this reason. Sure, it will be brought up on appeal; however, it will not be overturned for this.

Leave a Reply

X Close

Newsletter Sign-Up

X Close

Monthly Subscriber Sign-Up

Enter the maximum amount you want to pay each month
$ USD
Sign up for