The Davis pepper-spraying incident has been settled for a cool million. And John Pike, the sprayer, is now an ex-UC Davis policeman. From a corporate standpoint, a guilty party has been punished, complainers paid off, public outrage placated, problem solved. A former policeman needs to find a new line of work. His education, training, and experience (mostly funded by taxpayers) are all down the rat hole. The important fact to everyone up and down the chain-of-command: the UCD administration, the University of California hierarchy, the politicians who lay down the rules for education and the businessmen who control the funding--is that the proper authorities have dealt with the problem. To the proper authorities, Pike's misdeed was not that he sprayed poison on citizens who were acting within their rights, but that he caused a public relations difficulty that higher-ups--way higher-ups--could not avoid addressing. Another scapegoat bites the dust.
Pike said he hoped he would not be made a scapegoat, which means he knew he was doomed as soon as the toxic dust had settled. We all know he did what he was accused of doing. And his arrogant expression while spraying that huddled mass does not help his cause. It is the arrogance of someone who knows he serves an invincible institution, an institution whose orders he was following. Of course, afterward he remembered that the invincible corporate monolith he served--the corporate state we all support and serve--never hesitates to chop off whatever parts of itself become troublesome. He could probably sense his comrades start to withdraw. Suddenly, nobody knew him.
Why did Pike spray? Humans have been trying to explain human actions for a long time, and have yet to come up with answers that satisfy everyone. Surely, any of us could have done the same, under the right circumstances. The fact is policemen do not make policy. Like soldiers, they obey orders, and when deployed to keep order dressed in military garb and carrying military gear, they will commit acts of war, even on citizens who are acting within their rights.
The problem is that our social, economic, and governing structure no longer suits the needs of many people, and trends indicate the system will desert many more of us as time goes by. Furthermore, our elected representatives are no longer responsive to our messages, forced instead to serve the business interests that fund their campaigns. We the People must make ourselves heard through other channels, and the Law of the Land assures us the right, "peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances." Instead of listening to the protesters' grievances, the powers that be (not only in Davis, but all over the country) sent police as soldiers to quell the disturbance. There is no delicate way to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights. Still, when it happens, those at the top are ready with a routine of plausible denial, intended to put the blame on some underling whenever things go awry. This time, Pike was it.
Piling society's sins on a scapegoat is worse than merely ineffective--it allows "civilized" people to look down on "primitive" societies, and here we are, looking uncivilized. In America we teach our children not to use superior force to hurt people who make no threats, who are weak. We teach them not to harm people who are doing no harm, who are doing what they have a right to do. From the standpoint of our earliest social lessons, Pike behaved wrongly. Yet he was commanded to be there, to do what was necessary to keep order, to protect the State's property. He was doing his job, until public outrage forced his superiors to react, to deal with a problem they had not anticipated. The million-dollar settlement adds to the establishment's embarrassment. For causing legal, fiscal, and public relations problems (not for violation of moral fundamentals) Pike lost his job. Of course, there will be no criminal charges. Even today, most Americans still get a speedy and public trial, and a public trial of a UC Davis policeman would expose the guilt of everyone up the chain of command, right up to us citizens. Since we the people are still nominally in control of our government, some of us might ask some tough questions of our political leaders, which incidentally, is also our right. No, it's better from a standpoint of orderly rectitude for Pike to just lose his job and disappear.
Our social and economic problems are still rampant. There will be more protests, and now demonstrators will know their rights are to some extent protected. The next time, will police officers act more humanely, more sensibly, out of fear of being fired? Will the establishment actually try to deal effectively with the demonstrators, try to serve us all, and not only the business interests behind the scenes? Or will the powers take a harder line, attempting to frighten both police and protesters into silent obedience? Time will tell.
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