The school ended up having to pay over $1 million to the students who were victims of Pike’s actions. But Pike is also claiming that he was a victim in the way he was treated following the protest.
Many people are expressing outrage over the police officer who worked for the University of California, Davis, who was involved in pepper spraying students during a peaceful protest on campus in November 2011 now asking for workers’ compensation benefits for conditions stemming from these events. The officer was fired for his handling of the incident and is now claiming that the incident caused him psychological damage.
John Pike, the former officer for UC Davis, was fired in 2012 after an internal affairs investigation into his actions at the protest was undertaken. The November protest was caught on video and the shocking video went viral on the Internet. It shows Pike pepper spraying students who are already on the ground, passively protesting high tuition increases and showing support for the Occupy movement.
The school ended up having to pay over $1 million to the students who were victims of Pike’s actions. But Pike is also claiming that he was a victim in the way he was treated following the protest.
After being fired Pike reportedly was able to collect a pension for the years he worked at Davis.
Now Pike is claiming that the event had a negative effect on his well-being and has resulted in a moderate disability that impacts his life. He filed a workers’ compensation claim for nervous system and psychiatric injuries that have plagued him since the protest and is seeking a settlement in a yet to be determined amount.
UC Davis and Pike’s attorney both agreed on an expert psychiatrist to evaluate Pike and the psychiatrist determined that Pike’s claims do have some merit. The expert did find that Pike does, in fact, suffer from a moderate disability. Under the law Pike is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits if an injury has occurred, whether or not people agree with the idea of him filing a compensation claim for an incident that caused injury to others.
UC Davis issued a statement saying, “Although the agreement has not been completed, the university expects that, in accordance with the board rating, John Pike will receive financial compensation.”
Ian Lee is now a junior at UC Davis but in 2011 when he was a freshman he participated in the passive protest. He is one of the students who was pepper sprayed by Pike and when asked to comment on the current situation, he said “I think it’s wrong. I think we can’t reward people like Pike for hurting students. That’s a message we absolutely can’t send.”
While each state has a different workers’ compensation system, one of ways that workers’ comp insurance works is that the system intends to protect both employers and employees. By providing benefits to injured workers, regardless of how they are injured or whose fault the injury is, employers protect themselves against injured employees taking civil action against them. With workers’ comp, employees are limited to the benefits they receive from the employer’s insurance and cannot seek more money in court later on.
