I though cops //theoretically// weren't allowed on campus?
It seems that an exception to the rule is if the university calls them.
Last week[1] students at my university (in Montreal), went into the Administration building and tried to occupy the offices of the principal. This is, apparently[2], something we have a tradition of doing every time someone tries to increase the tuition fees.
Long story short, campus security didn't know what to do, there was also a bit of a hostage situation[3] going on, and
so the cops were called. (By whom?) The the cops called the riot squad and then batons and pepper spray ensued.
Speaking of which, does anybody know what the cops spray people with?
If you have a bottle of water with you and you wash your eyes are you OK? Or do you need another solution?
This varies by country; some countries have laws keeping police off campus, for various historical reasons. Some date back to the semi-independence of medieval universities, which weren't supposed to be harassed by the local authorities; others are more recent laws, e.g. Greece's "university asylum" law was a reaction to police raids on campuses by the '67-'74 military dictatorship.
The U.S. doesn't have any particular no-police-on-campus rules, although they do have an interesting arrangement in many cases, including this one, where the campus police have been upgraded to "real" police, and non-university police are not usually allowed on campus, because it's not in their jurisdiction. How they relate to the university administration tends to be complex, but the goal is to make some mixture of a regular police force and a campus-security force: more "official" than only a campus security force, but university-controlled, like a campus-security force would be, as opposed to having city-controlled police on campus.
It usually actually works pretty well, I think. Incidents like this are a lot less common than they might be with a regular police force, and many campus police have a geniune interest in keeping campuses calm and defusing confrontations. Even in this video, you can see that only one cop is really acting out of line, and many of the others look a bit uncomfortable with what's going on (especially when he's taking other cops' bottles of pepper spray to go back for more).
Pepper spray (what is apparently used in that video) is supposed to be extremely painful, and pain lasts for about half an hour. Rinsing eyes with lots of water can help, though that may not be an option as the order is generally to pepper-spray, then handcuff. Apparently a 50-50 solution of Malox and water is preferable to straight water. Hold head to side when rinsing, so water drips off, not down body.
It seems that an exception to the rule is if the university calls them.
Last week[1] students at my university (in Montreal), went into the Administration building and tried to occupy the offices of the principal. This is, apparently[2], something we have a tradition of doing every time someone tries to increase the tuition fees. Long story short, campus security didn't know what to do, there was also a bit of a hostage situation[3] going on, and so the cops were called. (By whom?) The the cops called the riot squad and then batons and pepper spray ensued.
Speaking of which, does anybody know what the cops spray people with? If you have a bottle of water with you and you wash your eyes are you OK? Or do you need another solution?
[1] http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/riot-police-at-mcgill-1.26... [2] http://news-archive.mcgill.ca/w97/salaries.htm [3] www.mcgilltribune.com/opinion/we-too-are-mcgill-1.2707960?compArticle=yes