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Former University of California police officer John Pike, who in 2011 infamously pepper-sprayed a group of prone, arm-locked Occupy protesters at the system’s campus in Davis, will receive thousands of dollars more in compensation than his victims did.



Mr. Pike has been awarded $38,000 in workers' compensation for “moderate” psychiatric distress caused by outrage against his pepper-spray action. The award is raising questions about labor laws: whether in general they are too accommodating of ill-behaved employees, and whether in this specific case they have been used to support a police officer’s predisposition to harm peaceful people.

A video of the 2011 protest at UC Davis, which went viral online and became an iconic moment in Occupy lore, caught Pike walking calmly and bureaucratically down a line of sitting protesters, spraying them in the face to get them to move. Pike was eventually fired after eight months of paid administrative leave.

An investigatory panel led by former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso found fault with police and university administrators for their handling of the protest. The panel determined that Pike did not need to use pepper spray and that he stood too close to protesters to use it safely.

Pike claimed in July that he deserved workers' compensation stemming from mental duress. The former US Marine faces “continuing and significant internal and external stress with respect to resolving and solving the significant emotional upheavals that have occurred,” concluded psychiatrist Richard Lieberman. The university compensated 21 protesters who said they suffered anxiety and trauma that harmed their school careers. They received about $30,000 each.

The pepper-spraying sparked both outrage and debate, and the incident prompted the University of California system to change its pepper-spray rules. The California prison system also recently changed its protocols for using pepper spray.

Pike's compensation award, however, upset some Americans, who say it sends a wrong message. California lawyer Bernie Goldsmith told the Davis, Calif., Enterprise newspaper that the Pike award “sends a clear message to the next officer nervously facing off with a group of passive, unarmed students: Go on ahead. Brutalize them. Trample their rights. You will be well taken care of.”

But under state and federal law, workers who are injured on the job are not disqualified from receiving benefits due to workers, even if they, like Pike, acted as an aggressor. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/1024/Pepper-spray-cop-gets-b
igger-payout-than-sprayed-students.-Wrong-message-video