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Students pepper sprayed by cops caught in photos, videos, and tweets

When students protesting a college meeting to raise tuition became confrontational, cops responded with pepper spray.

 

David Holmes

IRL

Posted on Apr 4, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 7:00 pm CDT

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California police officers are under fire again after pepper spraying a group of students at Santa Monica College, a two-year institution just outside Los Angeles. The students were reportedly attempting to push their way into a Board of Trustees meeting on proposed tuition hikes, a source of ongoing conflict across California’s public universities.

This is the second time in six months that police have used pepper spray on students at a California college campus, but there are numerous differences between yesterday’s incident and what happened at UC-Davis last November. The UC-Davis students disobeyed orders from campus police, but were sitting peacefully and posed no apparent threat when they were pepper-sprayed. The Santa Monica College students, on the other hand, were noticeably more confrontational. Whether that merits the use of pepper-spray, however, is for you to decide.

Photo by TheDigitalfolklore

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*First Published: Apr 4, 2012, 3:58 pm CDT