Recommendations

Recommendations call for the development, revision, or communication of existing or new policy. The policy may be developed at the systemwide level with input from all of the campuses and the police. Others will be developed at campus level in consultation with the Council of Chiefs, some relate specifically to police policy and existing state law.

Recommendations in this category include: 1, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, and 43.

  1. Add to current campus "Free Speech" and police policies language formally recognizing that civil disobedience has had a historic role in our democracy, but that it is not protected speech under the Constitution, and that it may have consequences for those engaging in it.
  2. Collect eat campus's current time, place, and manner regulations and all policies governing the response to events of civil disobedience, including applicable systemwide and campus police policies; post collected policies on system and campus websites.
  3. Develop principles to guide the event response team in determining whether particular acts of civil disobedience merit a response - when a response is necessary, specify use of lower levels of force (e.g., persuasion, hands-on compliance), before resorting to higher levels of force (e.g., baton strikes or jab, pepper spray), barring exigent circumstances.
  4. When faced with protesters who are non-aggressively linking arms, and when the event response team has determined that a physical response is required, principles should specify that administrators should authorize the police to use hands-on pain compliance techniques rather than higher levels of force (e.g., baton strikes or jabs, pepper spray), unless the situation renders pain compliance unsafe or unreasonable.
  5. Place an administrator on-site within viewing distance of the event and with instant communication to the police Incident Commander and to the Chancellor or to the individual to whom the Chancellor has delegated decision-making responsibility.
  6. Absent exigent circumstances, bar commencement or escalation of force by police unless the Chancellor or the Chancellor's designee approves it immediately before the action is taken. If the Chancellor designates decision-making responsibility, the Chancellor's designee must (Edley) or may (Robinson) be a member of the Academic Senate.
  7. Require each campus police agency to seek aid first from other UC campuses before calling on outside law enforcement agencies, except where there is good cause for seeking aid from an outside agency.
  8. Require the Chief of Police on each campus personally to interview and approve all newly hired sworn officers.
  9. Develop or modify existing student discipline processes to ensure that, in appropriate circumstances, they are an available response option.
  10. Establish and implement a systemwide response option framework for use on each campus.
  11. Require that campus police and other authorities (to the extent controlled by the University) act in accordance with the response option framework, absent exigency or good cause.
  12. Develop a systemwide process for determining which "less lethal" weapons may be utilized by UC police officers.
  13. Require each campus Police Chief personally to approve the specific types of less lethal weapons available to officers in their department.
  14. Require each campus police department to include the list of weapons approved for use in response to demonstrations and civil disobedience in its use-of-force policies, and to make the list available to the public.
  15. Recommend that appropriate authorities commission further studies on the effects of pepper spray on resisters as compared to the effects of other force options.
  16. Amend existing police department policies to require after-action reports for all protest events involving a police response, regardless of whether the response resulted in force, injury, or civilian complaint.