Report On UC Davis Pepper Spraying Delayed By Police Challenge
DAVIS (CBS13/AP) — A University of California task force on Monday delayed the release of a report on the pepper-spraying of student demonstrators by police officers during an Occupy protest at UC Davis last fall.
Task force chairman Cruz Reynoso made the decision after learning the officers' union plans to seek a court order to halt the report's public disclosure, university officials said.
The UC Davis task force was scheduled to publish the report online Tuesday before discussing its findings and recommendations at a public meeting on campus later in the day.
"I am tremendously disappointed by this delay and know that many of you will be as well," Chancellor Linda Katehi wrote in a letter sent out campus-wide.
"Hopefully, this delay will be brief and we will receive the task force's findings soon," she wrote. "Meanwhile, work continues as we near completion of the campus's own internal affairs investigation into complaints of officer misconduct, which would be the basis for any personnel actions concerning the accused officers."
John Bakhit, the union attorney, told The Associated Press that officers involved in the Nov. 19 incident don't want their names and confidential information they told investigators published in the report.
"We don't have any issue with the findings being released, but we were (initially) told the report wasn't going to include names or confidential information," Bakhit said Monday.
Bakhit, an attorney for the Federated University Police Officers Association, plans to request a temporary restraining order in Alameda County Superior Court on Tuesday.
"I was very frustrated to receive this news today," Reynoso, a former California Supreme Court justice, wrote in letter to task force members Monday. "However, let me assure you that I am undeterred in my commitment to release the complete and unredacted work of the Task Force."
The 12-member task force was created to investigate the incident, when campus police officers doused pepper spray on sitting protesters who had set up an Occupy encampment at UC Davis.
The encounter prompted national outrage, a federal civil rights lawsuit and calls for Katehi's resignation after videos of the spraying went viral, including exclusive video by CBS13.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.)
