Who owns the police?

This is the first story that I read this morning.

The cops now say they feared for their lives because of the crowd that was gathering around them! Look at that photo. Look at this even better photo. What do you see? A dozen students on the ground looking at their feet, and some onlookers all holding up cameras at a respectable distance - you'll note the other cops aren't looking terribly worried. Then watch the video. The cop casually saunters over and pepper sprays the people sitting down, which is odd since supposedly they were afraid of the people who were standing up.

Here's the video:

I mean, look at those goons -- one of them is holding what looks like a rifle.

There's the cop's information:

Lieutenant John Pike
530-752-3989
japikeiii@ucdavis.edu

Do you suppose he feels like real man now?

I checked out the university's Facebook page, which is almost entirely calls for the Chancellor to resign. The chief of the university police should go, too.

Maha has a very interesting take on public reaction to these events, although I don't think this one is going to find people siding with the police.

My point is that we’re not entering into some new age in which Power can take the law into its own hands and brush away opposition like so much dandruff. This is the way things have always been. If you are going to engage in public demonstrations, you have to be well prepared for it.

Read the whole post -- it's almost impossible to excerpt, and her conclusion doesn't give a good view of what came before.

And here's another interesting tidbit from Crooks & Liars:

Republicans want to privatize Social Security and Medicare. The Bush and Obama Administrations have privatized law enforcement on Wall Street by asking banks to police themselves. And during the devastating San Diego fires, residents learned that AIG had created a private fire department that saved the homes of its clients while other nearby houses burned.

Privatized police. Privatized fire departments. Privatized prisons. Privatized armies of Halliburton and Blackwater soldiers. When for-profit companies perform government functions, they'll do it in a way that makes them money. That's not hard to understand, but our "leaders" keep doing it anyway.

And they don't think they have to pay attention to the Bill of Rights, either.

And taking all that into account, how much of the excessive police actions against OWS do you think is designed specifically to incite a violent response?