WHAT!?!?!?!? CA Tax dollars paid for an attorney for this guy, AND THEN he is awarded $38k for STRESS!?!!?!? From the article: "According to the Enterprise, Pike was making $121,680 annually when he was fired from the department. " WHAT!?!?!???????????????????????????????????????? ...shoot... Can I sign up to be campus security? You can give me the same salary, and I won't pepper spray people? Think of all of the money they'd save!
This is a pretty small price to pay to get the guy off the force. Getting a police officer who has killed an innocent person is almost impossible in my city, the community would gladly raise the money if this was all it took to get rid of some of these guys.
So? For the sake of argument I'll take a contrarian position: it sounds like the guy suffered quite a bit of mental distress due to the internet lynch mob that formed following the incident. The higher compensation makes sense considering the relative short-term effects of being sprayed compared to suffering through anxiety and depression.
What was the compensation to the victims of the pepper spray?
I guess being disapproved of for pepper spraying people sitting harmlessly on the ground is about 26% more stressful than being pepper sprayed for sitting harmlessly on the ground.Last September, UC Davis agreed to spend roughly $1 million to compensate current and former students who became victims in the Nov. 2011 incident, dishing out $30,000 settlements apiece to 21 plaintiffs, and another $6,666 to 15 others that stepped up later