By Will Kane and Demian Bulwa

A debate over the use of police force has reignited at the UC Berkeley campus after videos surfaced showing officers repeatedly shoving and jabbing screaming students who tried to keep officers from dismantling a nascent Occupy encampment.

The videos taken by protesters, journalists and casual observers show UC Berkeley police and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies in riot gear ordering students with linked arms to leave a grassy area outside the campus administration building Wednesday. When the students didn’t move, police lowered their face shields and began hitting the protesters with batons.

University police say the students, who chanted “You’re beating students” during the incident, were not innocent bystanders, and that the human fence they tried to build around seven tents amounted to a violent stance against police.

But many law enforcement experts said Thursday that the officers’ tactics appeared to be a severe overreaction.

Both the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild said they had “grave concerns about the conduct” of campus police.

“Video recordings raise numerous questions about UCPD’s oversight and handling of these events, including whether law enforcement were truly required to beat protesters with batons,” the two groups wrote in a letter to campus officials.

In total, 39 people were arrested Wednesday; 22 were students and one was a professor, police said. All but one were taken to jail and released.

“The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” UC police Capt. Margo Bennett said. “I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”

Bennett said police merely wanted to enforce the ban on camping on Sproul Plaza, but were prevented from doing so by students.

“Students who linked arms were interfering with the officers who were attempting to remove those tents,” she said.

Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, said he saw nothing inappropriate in how one deputy shown in a video used his baton. Nelson said it appeared the deputy was trying to keep students from breaching a police line.

Questionable actions

Yet many experts said the officers’ actions were at least questionable and likely excessive.

“Using a baton to go through a nonviolent crowd is as inappropriate today as it was in the South when they used it to enforce segregation in the 1960s,” said Jim Chanin, a Berkeley attorney who specializes in police misconduct issues.

Sam Walker, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who has served as a consultant to the Oakland Police Department, said he thought the campus response was “unprovoked” and “completely unnecessary.”

Using a baton to aggressively poke protesters can be dangerous, Walker said.

“The way they were using it, you’re very likely to hit the groin or kidney,” he said. “I think it is an excessive action and totally unwarranted in the circumstances we see on the video.”

This isn’t the first time university officers have been accused of excessive force during a protest.

In November 2009, hundreds of students orchestrated a chaotic, daylong rally against tuition increases, among other issues. At one point during the demonstration, protesters pushed a police line back by about six feet.

Officers, with no direction from commanders, reacted by striking students with batons, using both jabs and overhead strikes, to re-establish the perimeter.

A review led by Wayne Brazil, a UC Berkeley law professor and retired federal magistrate judge, said the effort to push the crowd back a few feet was “incomprehensible” and “resulted in chaos, confusion and considerable violence.”

Handling civil disobedience

The report urged the university to develop clear policies for handling mass civil disobedience. Yet the campus’ most recent crowd-control policy was published in 2000. It gives no guidance on the use of batons.

Avoiding all use of force is “highly desirable,” the policy states, but “a variety of techniques and tactics may be necessary” depending on the situation and the available resources.

David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said people who see such startling videos online shouldn’t assume police acted inappropriately.

“The question becomes, what are (police) trying to accomplish” by shoving protesters, he said. “Is it just a little jab or are they following through? Looking at the video, you can’t say.”

But Shane Boyle, a graduate student who was smacked twice while linked with protesters, said he thought commanders sent a squad of thugs to break up the protest.

“The one that hit me was going kind of crazy,” Boyle said. “He was kind of fierce.”

Boyle said he thought the footage had galvanized his peers and united disparate groups around a frustration with the university.

— Chronicle staff writers Justin Berton and Nanette Asimov contributed to this report.

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