UC Davis campus police use pepper spray YouTube

Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in pepper spraying seated protesters are being placed on administrative leave as the chancellor of the school accelerates the investigation into the incident.

Chancellor Linda Katehi said she has been inundated with reaction over the incident, in which an officer dispassionately fired pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators.

Video of the incident was circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, and the university's faculty association called on Katehi to resign, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership".

Katehi said she takes "full responsibility for the incident" but has resisted calls for her resignation, instead pledging to take actions to make sure "that this does not happen again".However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force "fairly standard police procedure".

In the video, an officer dispassionately pepper-sprays a line of sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed with batons by police on 9 November.

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques, Kelly said.

Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq war veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Oregon.

Some of the most notorious instances went viral online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of women in New York. Seattle's mayor apologised to the activist, and the New York Police Department official shown using pepper spray on the group of women lost 10 vacation days after an internal review.

In the video of this week's UC Davis protest, the officer, a member of the university police force, displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but several are hit directly in the face. Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, "Shame on you," as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.

Ten people were arrested at the protest. Nine students hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene, two were taken to hospitals and later released, university officials said.Elsewhere in California, police arrested six Occupy San Francisco protesters early on Sunday and dismantled a tent encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Officer Albie Esparza said police and city crews took down about 12 tents. The six were arrested on charges of interfering with officers.

The raid came several hours after police and public works crews removed dozens of tents from the nearby Occupy camp at Justin Herman Plaza.

Earlier, several hundred protesters in Oakland tore down a chain-link fence surrounding a city-owned vacant lot and set up a new encampment five days after their main camp near City Hall was torn down.

"They obviously don't want us at the plaza downtown. We might as well make this space useful," Chris Skantz, 23, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Occupy Oakland protesters breached the fence and poured into the lot next to the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue, police said in a statement.

The protesters passed a line of police surrounding the lot without a struggle, used wire cutters to take down the fence and pulled down "no trespassing" signs, the Chronicle reported.

Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said surrounding streets had been closed and officers were protecting nearby buildings

Watson said there had been no arrests or citations, but the city's position remains that no camping will be allowed and protesters cannot stay overnight.