Campus Police

UC Davis announced Thursday that it has appointed a new chief to head its campus police force for at least a year and to help guide it past the controversies stemming from last November's pepper-spraying of student demonstrators by its officers. Matthew Carmichael, who has been acting chief since November and a lieutenant on the campus force for a decade before that, was sworn in for a yearlong term, UC Davis officials said. The school said it would launch a national search later for a longer-term chief.

University of California police and administrators should use mediation instead of confrontation when dealing with most student protests, but pepper spray might remain a necessary tool of last resort, according to a UC draft report on campus civil disobedience. The new study, released Friday, urged that campus police be trained to defuse potentially volatile situations and that UC officials not even mobilize police at peaceful demonstrations. In the rare instances when force is required, the report recommended the campus police try "hands-on pain compliance" such as arm twisting or pressure points "before pepper spray or batons whenever feasible.

Cal State Northridge police officers conducted room-by-room searches of a dormitory this week after receiving reports of a gunman. No gunman was found. Campus police spokeswoman Christina Villalobos said that the first of several calls came into the dispatch center at 11:27 p.m. Tuesday. The callers said a man with a gun was seen running into one of the buildings in University Park Apartments, which houses about 2,000 students. Villalobos says officers arrived within three minutes and called the Los Angeles Police Department for backup The search was called off about 2 a.m.

UC Davis announced Thursday that it has appointed a new chief to head its campus police force for at least a year and to help guide it past the controversies stemming from last November's pepper-spraying of student demonstrators by its officers. Matthew Carmichael, who has been acting chief since November and a lieutenant on the campus force for a decade before that, was sworn in for a yearlong term, UC Davis officials said. The school said it would launch a national search later for a longer-term chief.

Los Angeles Community College District Chancellor Donald G. Phelps has announced that he has formed a committee to review the function and effectiveness of the district's campus police departments. The committee, headed by district Vice Chancellor Neil Yoneji, will study the economic effect of campus police on the district, Phelps said Wednesday at a district Board of Trustees meeting.

Campus police in the South Orange County Community College District will get new weapons under a $19,000 plan approved Monday by trustees. In a 4-to-1 vote, trustees approved upgrading campus police weapons from .38-caliber revolvers to 9-millimeter semiautomatic handguns. Campus police officials said the upgrade, endorsed by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, is necessary because the 15-year-old revolvers in use lack safety devices.

Schools Supt. Roy Romer said Thursday that he would appoint a panel of "prominent citizens with expertise in police matters" to review the findings of an internal investigation into whether a campus police officer used excessive force while restraining a student last week. Romer announced his plans after watching a televised video of the officer pinning a student to the ground and twice hitting him in the face during a melee at a South Los Angeles high school.

Cal State Fullerton campus police and the Fullerton Police Department have agreed informally that city police will automatically refer nuisance complaints against university fraternities to campus security officials. The agreement comes in the wake of increasing numbers of complaints from residents living near the university's fraternity row, two blocks north of the campus, that fraternity members litter their property, park on their streets and make too much noise.

Campus police at Pierce College exchanged their khaki clothes for more traditional blue uniforms and painted their formerly white cars black and white this semester, and the greater visibility apparently has paid off. Crime and traffic violations are down, said Police Capt. Ken Renolds, who heads the Pierce police force.

In an effort to curb rising crime rates on the county's community college campuses, trustees have decided to spend an extra $280,000 to add police officers. Agreeing that campus security is a top priority, the Ventura County Community College District board voted unanimously late Tuesday to hire eight campus police officers. "We've got to do it around the clock with as many officers as possible," said trustee Bob Gonzales, who is also Santa Paula's police chief.

Anybody who watched last fall's viral videos of campus police officers blasting orange pepper spray into the faces of seated protesters at UC Davis could have figured out that something had gone very wrong on the Central California campus. But it took two reports on the incident by an independent university panel and paid consultants to spell out the scope of the screw-ups, which indict not just the officers holding the spray canisters but the entire campus police force, its chief, a team of university leaders and Chancellor Linda Katehi.

UC Davis police violated policy and used poor judgment in pepper-spraying student demonstrators in November, while school leaders badly bungled the handling of that campus protest, according to a highly critical report released Wednesday. "Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented," said the report by a university-appointed task force chaired by retired state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso.

The University of California's investigative report into the controversial pepper-spraying of student protesters by UC Davis campus police is expected to be released publicly Wednesday — with most officers' names removed. After a monthlong legal battle delaying the release, UC and its police union reached a tentative legal settlement Monday that would allow the public disclosure of most of the report about police tactics and UC Davis administrators' roles in the November incident.

About 100 students protesting a plan to offer high-priced courses at Santa Monica College this summer tried to storm into a meeting of the college's Board of Trustees on Tuesday evening. A handful of protesters suffered minor injuries as campus police tried to prevent dozens of chanting students from disrupting the meeting during a public comment period. Several were overcome when pepper spray was released just outside the meeting room as officers tried to break up the crowd. Two people were taken to a hospital.

A 19-year-old student at the University of Maryland has been taken into custody and hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation after allegedly threatening to go on a shooting rampage on the campus Sunday. Alexander Song, a student at the university system's flagship campus in College Park, Md., allegedly promised to carry out his plans at 1:30 in the afternoon, according to a statement from the school's public safety department. "I will be on a shooting rampage tomorrow on campus," he wrote earlier in the weekend, according to the school's statement.

The gunman who opened fire in the lobby of a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic on Thursday, killing a therapist and wounding seven other people, was identified as a local man named John F. Shick, police said Friday. Schick, 31, was from the Shadyside-Oakland neighborhood near the scene of the shooting, police spokeswoman Diane Richard said in an email. Officials had said earlier they were having trouble identifying him . There was no immediate indication of a motive for the attack.

The Los Angeles Community College District is disbanding a committee formed by its chancellor to study the effectiveness of campus police, which created uneasiness among the officers that they might be replaced by private guards. Chancellor Donald Phelps said in a memo sent to committee members Thursday that he will instead ask the district board of trustees to hire an outside consultant "for the purpose of looking at our police and safety needs."

An Alameda County Superior Court judge Tuesday temporarily blocked the release of a University of California investigative report about the controversial pepper-spraying of UC Davis student protesters by campus police in November. Judge Evelio Grillo's ruling in an Oakland courtroom came at the request of the UC police union. The Federated University Police Officers Assn. contends that state law forbids public disclosure of such information as the names of UC Davis campus police officers involved in the spraying incident and personnel information garnered from interviews with them.

Three months after being pepper sprayed or allegedly roughed up by UC Davis campus police during an Occupy demonstration, 19 students and alumni Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit claiming that their free speech and assembly rights were violated in the controversial incident. The suit names Chancellor Linda Katehi as a defendant, along with other campus administrators and police officers. It details allegations against campus police Lt. John Pike, who the suit says sprayed the seated or crouching protesters at close range, causing pain to their eyes and faces.