A San Diego congressmember is taking last week’s campus police actions into his own hands.
Congressman Marty Block announced Tuesday that he will hold a state hearing to determine whether UC Davis police used excessive force to disband protestors on campus.
The viral footage of Friday's protest showed two officers dousing several students with pepper spray. The officers and the campus police chief have since been placed on leave.
Block is also chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and former dean at SDSU. He said the oversight hearing will include of a review of campus police policies and procedures.
The committee hearing is just one of many investigations into Friday's incident. University of California hired former LAPD Police Chief William Bratton to investigate the police actions as well. UC President Mark Yudof described Bratton as “a renowned expert in progressive community policing.”
“My intent,” Yudof said in a statement, “is to provide the Chancellor and the entire University of California community with an independent, unvarnished report about what happened at Davis.”
In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union requested documentation of the day’s events from campus police.
Nearly 85,000 of students have signed a petition asking Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign. At a meeting Tuesday, she expressed no intent to do so, according to the university’s student newspaper.
