{"id":18739,"date":"2013-12-05T23:42:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T04:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=18739"},"modified":"2013-12-07T13:24:41","modified_gmt":"2013-12-07T18:24:41","slug":"lt-john-pike-goes-viral-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2013\/12\/05\/lt-john-pike-goes-viral-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (11)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.As promised in my previous post<\/a>, here’s what has happened to the major players in the UC Davis “pepper-spray cop” crisis between November 18, 2011 and the present.<\/p>\n

Below Lt. John A. Pike III in the pecking order on that fateful day stood UC Davis police officer\u00a0Alexander Lee<\/a>,\u00a0“likely . . . the least experienced officer present at the events of November 18.”<\/a>\u00a0Commanded by Pike to follow his example and spray some students illegally with unauthorized military-grade MK-9, Lee obeyed, blasting them at point-blank range<\/a>\u00a0even more aggressively than Pike (one of them directly in the mouth<\/a>) in front of dozens of cameras \u2015 a bad career move.<\/p>\n

\"Alexander

Alexander P. Lee, former officer in the UC Davis Police Dept., in action on November 18, 2011. Photo by N. George Harris, courtesy of Creative Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Placed on paid administrative leave a few days later, outed as “Officer O<\/a>” in the redacted Kroll\/Reynoso report,\u00a0Lee left the force<\/a>\u00a0on July 11, 2012, either fired or forced to resign.\u00a0Having spent less than two years on the Davis police force, Lee hadn’t earned his way into the pension system. So, as severance compensation, he got only the eight months of full pay with benefits for his “administrative leave.”\u00a0(He has John Pike to thank for that.)<\/p>\n

The photographic documentation of his actions that day effectively convicted him of unprofessional and illegal acts, which won’t look good on his resum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The same holds true for Pike, who ordered Lee to imitate his assault on the students, and whose subsequent narrative I detailed in my last post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Payin’ The Cost To Be The Boss (Not)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"UC

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza<\/p><\/div>\n

Just above them on the totem pole sat their commanding officer, UC Davis Police Department Chief Annette Spicuzza. The record indicates that she panicked the administration<\/a> by incorrectly “estimating that about 80 percent of the protesters were not students,” didn’t attend the operational briefing before the incident,\u00a0let the officers under her refuse to obey her orders<\/a> and decide which “less-lethal weapons” they’d take to the scene, and\u00a0spent the most crucial minutes of the incident “in the crowd filming the police actions with her cell phone.”<\/p>\n

Shortly after the unwarranted and illegal pepper-spraying of the students by Pike and Lee,\u00a0Spicuzza announced to her department<\/a>, “I wanted you to know, for those who weren\u2019t involved, that our officers showed great restraint, professionalism and respect for all involved. . . . I wanted to thank those involved for their work, all of their effort, and dedication. I am proud of all you do. Thank you.”<\/p>\n

She then\u00a0lied to the media about the situation on campus during the demonstration, claiming that students had surrounded and threatened the officers under her command. (Click here<\/a>\u00a0for the November 19, 2011 press conference. Spicuzza’s falsehoods can be found at 9:40 into the video.)<\/p>\n

When the photographic evidence\u00a0contradicted her multiple prevarications, and\u00a0the Kroll and Reynoso reports<\/a>\u00a0on the event castigated her for “weak leadership” and “tolerance of insubordination” in “a dysfunctional chain of command,” Spicuzza,\u00a0placed on administrative leave<\/a>\u00a0three days after the event, took early retirement on April 18, 2012.\u00a0In\u00a0a statement to the\u00a0Sacramento Bee<\/em><\/a>\u00a0she wrote, “I believe in order to start the healing process, this chapter of my life must be closed.”<\/p>\n

\"Annette

Annette Spicuzza whinges to Fox News, 7-24-13, screenshot.<\/p><\/div>\n

Regarding her role in the police action and departure from UC Davis, Spicuzza held her own pity party, whingeing to\u00a0Fox News<\/a>\u00a0in July of this year, “I didn\u2019t make that decision [to use pepper spray], I didn\u2019t know it had occurred. If I have any regret out of the entire situation it’s that we never had an opportunity to make it right. . . . I had to leave the state for a month because of death threats and fear for the safety of my family. I\u2019ve lost my home, lost my name, lost insurance. If these people wanted me to suffer they got their wishes.”<\/p>\n

Poor thing. My heart goes out to her. We can take comfort in the fact that, with seven years’ service as chief, Spicuzza, 56, is vested in the UC retirement plan. She retired at a salary level of $152,405, “entitled to either a lump-sum payment worth upwards of $286,000 or a lifetime income of about $1,700 per month, according to an online UC benefits calculator,” according to\u00a0a report in the\u00a0Davis Enterprise<\/em><\/a>. That’s on top of five months’ full pay and bennies while on administrative leave.<\/p>\n

Subsequently\u00a0selected to serve as the interim Public Safety Director<\/a>\u00a0of the City of\u00a0Pacific (located between Seattle and Tacoma, WA), Spicuzza\u00a0resigned that position after only two days<\/a>, for reasons unclear. There’s been no news of her since. I should add that she’s had ample time to take responsibility for her failure to discipline Pike and Lee, to explain their illegal possession of military-grade MK-9 (in whose\u00a0use they had no training), and to apologize. Don’t hold your breath on that.<\/p>\n

She’s Not So Innocent<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Linda

Linda Katehi, UC Davis Chancellor, still from “Walk of Shame” video, 11-20-11.<\/p><\/div>\n

Moving from the lower end of the chain of command toward the top, we come now to UC Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi, who has Donna Summers’s “I Will Survive” as her theme song, I suspect.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We now know that Katehi issued an illegal order<\/a> to remove the tents and possessions of the students legally occupying the quad at U. C. Davis on November 18, 2011. The protestors were not \u2015 repeat, not \u2015 performing acts of civil disobedience; they exercised their constitutional right to assemble in public, on public property.\u00a0Katehi’s ignorance of and disregard for the law constituted, in and of themselves, grounds for her immediate dismissal by Mark G. Yudof, then president of the statewide University of California system.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that Katehi\u00a0lies and blames victims to cover her ass as a matter of habit.\u00a0Her initial statement<\/a>\u00a0read, in part, “We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.” She also asserted that “Technically speaking, the police followed protocol” \u2015 by applying an unauthorized grade of pepper spray in whose use they had no training.\u00a0After that, she repeatedly stated falsely that\u00a0that she tried to meet with the students<\/a> who were sprayed but was rebuffed.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that, due to budgetary and time constrictions imposed by the university on the\u00a0Kroll\/Renoso Task Force, they based their report strictly on the documents supplied to them by the university \u2015 that is, their mandate did not empower them to conduct a forensic search of the files of the Chancellor, the university police department, and others involved. We’ll likely never know what even more damning evidence Katehi covered up, though some of it has trickled out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that, even with those constraints, the Kroll\/Reynoso Task Force Report<\/a>\u00a0on the event, commissioned by the university, determined\u00a0that in Katehi’s administration “the actions of the Leadership Team provide a case study in how not to make important institutional decisions.” The report also cites numerous further falsehoods promulgated by Katehi in an assortment of official communications.\u00a0(Click here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a> for detailed commentaries on the report and its conclusions.)<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that\u00a0over 3,500 emails were sent to the UC Board of Regents in response to the police actions against students during protests at UC Berkeley\u00a0and\u00a0UC Davis\u00a0in November. According to\u00a0The Daily Californian<\/a>, “Over 2,000 of the emails called for UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi\u2019s resignation [as part of email campaigns],” as did an additional 500 sent individually. Only two of the 3500 emails approved of the handling of these situations.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that Katehi\u00a0responded to this in Pollyanna mode, issuing a relentlessly upbeat “State of the Campus”<\/a> report on April 12, 2012, immediately after publication of the Kroll\/Renoso report, and issuing a letter thanking the Reynoso Commission<\/a> for its efforts, as if it contained no condemnation of her and no challenge to her competence and fitness for office. (For a scathing analysis of her weaselly locutions, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that she’s an expert spinmeister. Spend a few minutes with the documents I’ve linked to in the paragraph just above, and the op-ed piece she published in The Huffington Post just a few weeks after the pepper-spray attack,\u00a0“Our Students Are Not Protesting in a Vacuum,”<\/a> which basically intimates that society’s at fault for this \u2015 what I \u00a0call the\u00a0Knock On Any Door<\/em>\u00a0defense. See also the mealy-mouthed form letter of apology<\/a>, dated February 15, 2013, that she sent to the people pepper-sprayed on her watch (one requirement of the eventual settlement of the federal lawsuit<\/a> filed by them against the university).<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that in May of 2012 the\u00a034-member Executive Council of the\u00a0UC Davis Academic Senate released a resolution that censured Katehi<\/a>\u00a0for “failure to perform adequately the tasks of her office and failure to provide clarity, candor and trustworthy accounts in relation to the events of Nov. 18,”\u00a0stopping short of calling for her resignation “at this time.”<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0We know that Katehi had a professional connection to\u00a0Penn State University President Graham Spanier,\u00a0fired in early November of 2011 in the wake of the indictment of football coach and serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. The disgraced Spanier hand-picked Katehi to become a member of “a group of university chancellors and presidents from major research institutions around the country [who meet] with FBI agents and representatives for the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board (NSHEAB). . . .\u00a0As a member of the NSHEAB, Katehi will help to foster a growing relationship between higher institutions of learning and the FBI. Special Agent Drew Parenti of the Sacramento FBI said this relationship is necessary for national security reasons.” (See “Chancellor Katehi appointed to FBI advisory board: Creates Open Dialogue Between UC Davis And FBI,”<\/a> in the California Aggie<\/em>, October 19, 2010, and “Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis”<\/a> by Dave Zirin for\u00a0The Nation<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0And we know that Katehi helped strip Greek universities of their asylum status, thus “play[ing] a role in allowing Greece security forces to raid university campuses for the first time since the junta was overthrown in 1974.”\u00a0(See\u00a0Mark Ames’s report<\/a>\u00a0from November 23, 2011.)\u00a0 The new laws she helped to contrive for Greece serve “to end student anti-austerity protests.”<\/a>\u00a0(For further reading on this, see\u00a0“Linda Katehi and the neoliberal reform of Greek Higher Education”<\/a> by Panagiotis Sotiris, Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean, and “Athens Polytechnic comes to UC Davis,”<\/a> by John Quiggen.)<\/p>\n

By my reckoning, she’s lost not only all credibility in her repeated claims of dismay over the pepper-spraying of the students under her supervision but any sympathy I felt initially for her plight. Indeed, this strikes me as what we in America call the chickens coming home to roost.<\/p>\n

Yet, by a majority of more than two to one, members of the same UC Davis Academic Senate voted against a motion<\/a> that would have expressed “no confidence” in Katehi’s leadership (taken in February 2012, before the release of the Kroll\/Reynoso report, which might have affected the outcome of that ballot).\u00a0Former California State Supreme Court Justice\u00a0Cruz Reynoso, whose commission released a report devastatingly critical of her, immediately thereafter recommended that she stay at her post<\/a> to supervise the very changes forced by her failures of leadership.\u00a0Gregory C. Pappas, publisher of Greek America Magazine<\/em> and founder of the Greek America Foundation, staunchly defended her<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last Woman Standing<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Mark

Mark G. Yudof (l) with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2008.<\/p><\/div>\n

As did Katehi’s boss, Mark G. Yudof,\u00a0president of the University of California, who had plausible deniability on all the decisions leading up to Pike’s meltdown and continued to express his complete confidence in Katehi\u00a0until he resigned his position<\/a>, effective August 1, 2013. (He received a compensation package valued at $828,000<\/a> in his incoming year, 2008-09, and\u00a0will receive an annual pension\u00a0of “at least $230,000”<\/a>\u00a0after little over five years of service. That should take some of the sting out of departing with this blot of pepper spray\u00a0fresh on his escutcheon as both an administrator and a legal expert with serious first-amendment chops<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"UC

UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi<\/p><\/div>\n

Which leaves Katehi as the last woman standing, so to speak. Everyone else in any position of authority in the hierarchy either resigned or got the heave-ho. Within a year or so all the students Pike sprayed will\u00a0have graduated or left. Against all odds (including my own prediction<\/a>), after all this\u00a0she’s still there<\/a>. In less than a year she too will become vested in the UC retirement plan (at roughly half the yield of Yudof’s, as she gets roughly half the salary he did). That\u00a0should take some of the sting out of the fact that her eventual obit will surely replay her November 19, 2011 televised “walk of shame”<\/a> along a path lined with the students whose trust she’d betrayed.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

For an index of links to all posts related to this story,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

This post\u00a0supported by a donation from\u00a0the Estate of Lyle Bong\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has become the last woman standing, so to speak, in the school’s pepper-spray scandal. Everyone else in any position of authority in the hierarchy either resigned or got the heave-ho. Within a year or so all the students Lt. John Pike sprayed will have graduated or left. In less than a year Katehi will become vested in the UC retirement plan. That should take some of the sting out of the fact that her eventual obit will surely replay her November 19, 2011 televised “walk of shame” along a path lined with the students whose trust she’d betrayed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,15],"tags":[867,41,299,309,330],"class_list":["post-18739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-life","category-digital-technology","category-news-commentary","tag-alexander-lee","tag-annette-spicuzza","tag-linda-p-b-katehi","tag-lt-john-pike","tag-mark-g-yudof","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}