The chancellor of the University of California, Davis on Saturday afternoon called video images of an officer calmly pepper-spraying a line of student protesters a day earlier "chilling" but said she would not step down.
Linda Katehi, who earlier Saturday said in a letter that she was forming a task force to investigate the incident, told an afternoon news conference that what the video shows is "sad and really very inappropriate."
..A UC-Davis professor called for the chancellor to step down, saying she was to blame for police pepper-spraying students during an Occupy protest on campus.
"You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt," Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of English, wrote in an open letter to Katehi.
He said she was accountable for "the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest."
Brown was referring to an incident Friday in which UC Davis police arrested 10 protesters and pepper-sprayed about a dozen more while trying to clear an Occupy encampment on campus, according to the Davis Enterprise.
The students who were pepper-sprayed were sitting on the ground, arms linked in solidarity. Brown said several of them had to be treated at the hospital.
"You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds," Brown wrote.
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