Lt. John Pike, the infamous UC Davis campus cop who blasted students with an industrial-sized canister of pepper spray during a peaceful campus protest, may have left his post in July, but the impacts of his actions are lingering.
Here’s Pike unloading the spray on students last 18 November, a scene captured by vlogger terrydatiger:
The latest development is a court settlement in which the university will pay damages to the students he sprayed.
From Larry Gordon of the Los Angeles Times:
The University of California will pay damages to the UC Davis students and alumni who were pepper sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest 10 months ago, officials said Thursday.
The UC regents, in a closed-door meeting, approved the proposed settlement payment to 21 UC Davis students and alumni who sued the university and contended their civil rights were violated in the widely criticized pepper spray incident.
However, both UC officials and the ACLU of Northern California, which is representing the students in the lawsuit, refused to divulge settlement details, saying the rules of the agreement talks require a federal judge to review the matter before it can be made public. That may happen within a few days, they said.
Jonathan Stein, the UC student regent, said the settlement was warranted. “We did an injustice to our students that day at Davis, and some amount of recompense is appropriate. More importantly, it’s time for us as an institution to publicly acknowledge that’s not the way we should treat our students; we were wrong, and we are moving forward,” he said.
Among his other legacies is a website filled with graphics inspired by his notorious actions.
One of our favorite images from PEPPER SPRAYING COP:
