Cops From Pepper-Spraying Incident Revealed In UC Davis' Reynoso Report
SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) -- The California Supreme Court has ruled this week that newspapers have a right to publish the names of all the UC Davis campus police officers involved in pepper-spraying student protesters in 2011.
A university police union tried to overturn a lower court ruling that allowed newspapers to publish officer's names, but the high court declined to hear their appeal.
The two-year legal battle was brought on by the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times, which sought to uncover all the involved officers' names which were previously redacted from a UC-commissioned report.
The Alameda County Superior Court supported the newspapers' position, and in June 2013, the state appellate court upheld that the California Public Records Act allows newspapers to know the names of UC campus police involved in the incident.
With the Supreme Court ruling, the university system released the complete report Thursday evening which now lists the names of the 18 officers.
READ THE UNREDACTED VERSION: UC Davis Reynoso Task Force Report
A statement released last night by UC Office of the President Steve Montiel Thursday night said:
"The University of California Office of the President commissioned and paid for the Reynoso Report with the intent to make it public. We attempted to publish the full, unredacted report in March 2012, and the campus police officers' union brought a lawsuit to keep us from doing so. We have complied with the courts' judgments and orders. Now that the state Supreme Court has dismissed the union's final appeal, we are prepared to release the unredacted report. The union asked for the opportunity to make a good-faith effort to notify the affected officers (Thursday) before doing so, and we have complied with that request."
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