Academia, Bizarre, Criminal law

University of California at Irvine Students Push For Ban On UC Police From Campus

xsouhlraThe University of California, Irvine Black Student Union is demanding a ban on the UC Irvine Police Department. The protest featured protesters with signs reading “Blue Lives Don’t Matter” and “F–k the Police.” It was an interesting protest after a professor at the University of Virginia was forced into a leave of absence after calling Black Lives Matter as racist organization akin to the KKK. In this case, however, equally caustic remarks against the police were not viewed as matters for discipline. I have favored free speech protections in all of these circumstances. My concern is that there is a double standard being applied based on the content of such speech.

The protest was triggered by the appearance of LAPD Chief Charlie Beck as part of UC Irvine’s “New Narratives” forum. Beck wanted to discuss police brutality and race in a program billed as an effort to “bring together leading scholars and innovative practitioners to define the problem, identify challenges, and discuss possible solutions to [police brutality.]” It would seem a rather odd choice for a BLM protest but protesters appeared with blood-spattered signs denouncing all police and chanting “Rise up, resist, put those killer cops in jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

A petition is circulating to ban the campus police department as well as a demand that LAPD Chief Beck be fired for the “police brutality” carried out by this department. Event organizers actually sold official Black Student Union “Fuck the Police” shirts and sweatshirts to wear to the protest.

There is no indication what would be done with criminal conduct in the absence of any campus police at Irvine. However, the more pressing question is whether the university would have responded in the same way if faculty or students protested that “Black Lives Do Not Matter” or the inverse of the profane posters used at the event. I would protect all such speech, but universities and colleges have imposed conflicting standards in these controversies.

What do you think?

53 thoughts on “University of California at Irvine Students Push For Ban On UC Police From Campus”

  1. Pingback: Putin preparing for war and yesterday's links

  2. Of course there is a double standard.

    And, of course, the BLM is getting notoriety for advocating assaults on police officers and disbanding entire police forces. It’s what their founders have been saying for a while.

    Race relations used to be so much better. But, activists have been quite successful at pushing divisiveness, rage profiteering, micro aggressions, trigger warnings, and all the other ways in which our offense systems get over sensitized. There is no coming together on issues anymore.

    randyjet – that doesn’t sound like a good ruling at all. People in a public place get filmed or their photos taken. People filming of course do not have the right to obstruct a police officer or contaminate a crime scene, but that’s about it.

  3. I think Prof Turley must comment on the Federal court in Eastern PA ruling that we do NOT have any right to video record police in public. THAT is a lot more important than some off the wall students making fools of themselves.

    1. Randyjet-
      There was a Feb. 24, 2016 JT column about the judge’s ruling.
      I don’t think that ruling applies to any of the other 93 federal districts courts.
      This was evidently the rookie judge’s first ruling since being appointed to the federal district court.
      I’ve seen very few updates on this story, after an initial flurry of reports.
      This decision was said to be under appeal, but given that most reporters just “go on to the next story”, I’m not sure of the status of ruling or any appeals that might be underway.
      That judge is so far out of line with other decisions that he’s likely to get his first decision as district judge shoved right back down his throat.

  4. This is absurd of course but it is what happens when the mistreatment of a group of people persists for decades and decades without any meaningful effort to eradicate the mistreatment. Like the Cultural Revolution in China, poorly informed and immature young people are going to truly ridiculous extremes based on their emotional response to genuine injustice in a movement that has no leader, no strategy and no solutions. Thus what we are seeing are sometimes irrational and foolish examples of uncontrolled or barely controlled rage. Obviously no dimwitted proposal such as this will or should be taken seriously but it is long past time when our nation and all its institutions began to take meaningful steps to address what we all know are a whole range of humiliations, disrespect and sometimes life threatening double standards applied mostly or entirely to members of various ethnic minorities in this country and often specifically and unfairly focused on African Americans. It’s a shame these young people go to such absurd extremes because that discredits the legitimate complaints that underlie their sophomoric demand that campus police be banned from campus.

    1. Horuss-
      The column mentions that the presence of the LAPD chief on campus was event that set off the BLM tantrums.
      That “New Narratives” forum was to have dealt with issues of police relations with minorities, police brutality, etc.
      You mentioned the “irrational and foolish” behavior might stem from failure to address the mistreatment of minorities.
      In this case, it looks like the BLM tantrums were caused by police participation in a forum meant to deal with the issues of mistreatment of minorities.
      So as far as BLM is concerned ( at least BLM and Black Student Union at UC/Irvine), their “irrational and foolish response” was triggered by an attempted outreach on the part of police, and the LAPD chief.
      Some police departments might conclude that not dealing with the complaints
      of minorities causes unrest, and that “community outreach” to address the complaints cause unrest.
      BLM and some other groups don’t seem to seek improved police/ community relations.
      Chanting “F**k the police” and similar slogans might indicate that they’re not interested in productive dialogue.

  5. Well, I think the college administration should grant this request! Send the campus police packing! Plus, declare the campus a “gun free” zone! In fact, outlaw any kind of weapon on campus, including baseball bats and kitchen knives!

    Then, the whole campus can become a safe space, and Peace, Harmony, and Social Justice can reign supreme at the college!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

    (PS: (If that happens, I am grabbing me some popcorn! Cause it will end up being like those “Purge” movies and you can sit back and watch SJWs getting mugged, shot,and raped and beaten to death! What fun!)

  7. There was an interesting article on ZeroHedge about how some of the PC insanity is promulgated in Europe. I suspect the same is SOP for us, too. The writer might be a little anti-Semitic-y, but, but still a good article:

    As you have probably noticed long ago, the media field is a huge and accommodating Petri dish for all varieties of Kulturbolschewismus. In Sven’s case, it wasn’t just a fear-based company policy of snitching and self-censorship, but an actual agenda at work. He told me there was a flowchart hanging in the newsroom explaining what to do when reporting crimes and incidents. It went something like this: “Was the perpetrator native (white)? Y = report in detail, amplify, N = gloss the details over, downplay.”

    Sven wrote an article about a national holiday once, but his content manager refused to approve it for publishing due to it being “too patriotic,” advising him instead to “write more inclusively about minorities’ participation in the festival.” Anything praising the country and its indigenous inhabitants was undesirable and omitted whenever possible, while any piece that brimmed with self-hate, praised inhabitants of other (read: African and Muslim) countries or attacked the natives and their way of life was a big hit and flew through approval like a bird.

    Needless to say, the outlet’s newsroom was crammed full of women, their pet cucks and, of course, Jews. The former enjoyed absolute power regardless of their position—a simple complaint to HR was enough to fire anyone, no proof required. The cucks, represented by twig-armed, piercing-laden, wispy-bearded creatures in Che Guevara shirts, were very pleased with the way things were going, sipping lattes and snitching to HR on those who expressed ideas incompatible with the narrative. Jews were in their native element in the newsroom, doing their usual “arrogant intellectual” schtick and getting promotions out of nowhere. The majority of articles bashing natives, their culture and values came from them, as later study of the newspaper’s website showed me.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-11/liars-hire-confessions-former-journalist-corrupt-media-establishment

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

    2. Not buying. If reporters and news analysts are as common in Sweden as they are in the United States, there would be about 1,500 such people employed at Swedish newspapers. There are 15,000 Jews in Sweden, making up 0.16% of the population. Were Jews present in newsrooms in proportion to their share of the population, there would be no more than 2 or 3 in the entire industry, much less a nest of them receiving unearned promotions at a single newspaper.

Comments are closed.