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UC Davis students, alumni file lawsuit in response to pepper spray incident

UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike pepper sprays demonstrators who had linked arms and were preventing attempts by the police to remove arrested protesters.
Jasna Hodzic/Courtesy
UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike pepper sprays demonstrators who had linked arms and were preventing attempts by the police to remove arrested protesters.

By Damian Ortellado | Staff

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Several UC Davis students and alumni filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the campus in response to the Nov. 18 police use of pepper spray during a campus protest.

Seventeen students and two alumni represented by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The lawsuit demands “compensatory and punitive damages” for the use of pepper spray and charges UC Davis police and campus officials with violating the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The students and alumni — who were personally involved in the campus protest — also allege that they were unlawfully arrested following the protest.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, UC Davis student David Buscho, said in an ACLU press release that the protest was his first demonstration.

“So many of my friends can barely make ends meet and then another tuition hike was proposed,” he said in the press release. “We had no idea there would be police in riot gear or that we would be pepper-sprayed because we were making our voices heard.”

UC Davis spokesperson Barry Shiller said in an email that the campus could not comment on the details of the lawsuit.

“Attorneys for the university and the plaintiffs have been talking,” he said in the email. “We hope those conversations continue. In the meantime, we’ve not seen the lawsuit and therefore aren’t in a position to comment on details.”

Damian Ortellado is the lead higher education reporter.

  • Guest 1125

    A protest that intentionally blocks walkways at a public school is a problem. What were the security people supposed to do?

    • PikeIsACriminal

       You make an arrest if the law allows for it. You do NOT use a weapon upon un-armed & non-violent people.

      The cop involved, JOHN PIKE, is a criminal who despite any lies to the contrary.. enjoyed being the thug that he obviously is.  He needs to be prosecuted.

      But, of course, we in the general public recognize every day that the various County District Attorney Offices bend over backwards to avoid prosecuting criminal cops like JOHN PIKE.

      We need to establish an entirely new system to investigate criminal behaviors by cops because
      the current DA based system fails nearly every time with criminal cops being “cleared” (to use
      the lame public employee term of choice).

      MESSAGE TO THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY: DO YOUR JOB & PROSECUTE JOHN PIKE FOR ASSAULT WITH A WEAPON .

  • Pikeisapig

    I haven’t followed this particular event’s outcome but I sure hope that the cop, JOHN PIKE, is treated like the animal that he is. He needs, firstly, to be fired from his job because he obviously is a dangerous person. He clearly saw no moral issue with assaulting non-violent and UN-armed students with his weapon of choice: pepperspray.