Was the Police "Brutality" Against California Campus Protesters Justified?

The media often shows police officers taking action in serious situations and portrays them in a negative light by accusing them of police brutality. When an officer shoots someone, arrests someone, or takes some other form of serious physical action, they usually have a good reason for it. The job of police officers is to protect our communities, but the communities often lash out against them in the media. Many people believe that police officers abuse their authority and take things too far, but it is difficult to make these judgements when the public does not know the whole story behind the situation. This issue of police brutality was recently publicized in the media when two California campus police officers pepper-sprayed protesters for not moving and following their orders. Here is the CNN story.

Suffolk County Police Officer Gary Kuhne has served as a police officer for almost thirty years. He is currently an instructor at the Suffolk County Police Academy, and has been there for the last 23 years. He has seen a lot of misconceptions about the police portrayed in media throughout the years, whether it is in local newspapers or on national television. He does not appreciate the way the media makes cops look, because he knows that there is much more to every situation than what is said in the news. And when citizens watch and read these news stories about police brutality, they lose their trust in the people who are working to help them. I interviewed him to find out what his expert opinions were about this story of police officers pepper-spraying protesters.

listen to ‘Protesters’ on Audioboo

When I first asked Officer Kuhne what he thought about this story, he believed that the officers were justified in their actions. As mentioned in his audio clip, the protesters were actively resisting the police officers by linking arms with each other and making a "wall" of protesters. Officer Kuhne then explained the difference between active resistance and passive resistance:

In our interview, Officer Kuhne explained that he could only speak to the laws the he worked by in New York State. He explained that the laws could be different in California, and that he is not familiar with their laws. This could mean that the California police officers were not justified in their actions of pepper-spraying the protesters, but he was able to recognize that he cannot form a strong opinion because he does not know all of the background information. Even as a police officer, he is not ready to jump to conclusions these officers just because the media tells him to do so.



After I conducted this interview with Officer Kuhne, he did some research of his own to find out more about this situation and whether it was justified or not. He found that although the protesters were actively resisting, the police officers had no reasons to believe that they were armed or harmful in any way. He explained to me that there are less extreme measures that could have been used in to diffuse this situation, such as using pressure points to get the protesters to unlock their arms. He explained that the pepper-spraying should only be used if the police officers have probable cause to believe that the protesters could be dangerous. This shows that even a veteran police officer needs to find more background information about a situation to draw conclusions and develop opinions about "police brutality" incidents that are portrayed in the media. If news sources are going to publicize these occurrences, they should find as much background information about the situation as possible to give a story to the public that is not biased in any way. The media should not try to portray police officers in a negative light.