Dick of the Year – Lieutenant John Pike
This is the first nomination for Bright Green’s Dick of the Year 2011 competition. To send us your nomination email 200 words to editors @ brightgreenscotland dot org.
By Adam Eagleson
Lieutenant John Pike of the University of California Davis police department probably isn’t a name that rings a whole lot of bells for most of you. However if I show you a certain picture, chances are that you will recognise the prick.
When a group of UC Davis students staging a peaceful demonstration were asked to move on by police officers, they sat down and linked arms, as those pesky protester types are prone to do. Lt. Pike then strolled along the line, pepper spraying them with the kind of lazy insouciance one might expect from a French jazz musician mumbling world weary nihilisms in-between cigarette drags and shoulder shrugs.
Within 24 hours, footage of the incident was available in pretty much every corner of the internet, and met with revulsion everywhere it was encountered. Kamran Loghman, who helped invent pepper spray for the FBI (and therefore very possibly a bit of a dick himself), remarked “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents”[1]. He was also previously taken to court for directing homophobic slurs at a colleague, just in case you thought he might be a nice guy deep, deep down.[2]
But as dickish as the actions of Lt. Pike were, they are not the sole reason I am nominating him. Through the wonders of social media, Pike has become a representation of police brutality and aggression worldwide, synonymous with bastardry in the name of shutting down protest. So for the Occupiers beaten in Oakland, for the Fortnum and Mason 145 conned into arrest in London, for the attempts to silence opposition in Moscow, for every unwarranted use of unearned authority in the effort to quell dissent, vote for John Pike. Because there’s more than one of him.
tl;dr – ACAB
[1] – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/23/pepper-spraying-cop-photoshop-justice
[2] – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065035/Pepper-spraying-cop-anti-gay-slur-lawsuit-ending-240-000-settlement-previously-saying-spray-best-tool.html
All I can say is “wow”. I am glad this was not my child, because I’d be in jail for telling Lt. Pike off. As a parent you have got to wonder what was this guy thinking? The world is a place where we need to come together, not spray our kids with pepper spray. I am sure, and I hope, that Lt. feels regret for his choice to douse the protesters with pepper spray. We need to forgive him, but not forget this is not cool.
I believe that we as humans need to work together to save our plant.
“One people, one plant”, is what I say!
Lonna Moreno