2011·The social era
Pepper Spray Cop
A photograph of police violence that the internet turned into a cut-out, and the university that later paid to bury it.
You might remember it as casually pepper spray everything cop
A meme
This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
On 18 November 2011, during an Occupy demonstration at the University of California, Davis, a campus police lieutenant walked along a line of seated students and pepper-sprayed them at close range, casually, one after another. Video and photographs spread within hours, and the image of the officer mid-spray was cut out and pasted into hundreds of other pictures — a Renaissance fresco, the Constitutional Convention, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road.
It first appeared in 2011, during the social era.
It is the case that made the political photo-meme legible as a form. The compositing was not a joke at the students' expense; it worked by repeating the officer's posture until its casualness became unmistakable, which is an argument made entirely through image editing. It remains the standard example of a meme functioning as protest.
The officer was dismissed and later awarded workers' compensation for the distress the reaction caused him; the students received a million dollars in settlement. In 2016 the Los Angeles Times reported that UC Davis had paid consultants to try to suppress search results about the incident, which failed and generated a second round of coverage about the attempt.
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Related
Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- On 18 November 2011, during an Occupy demonstration at the University of California, Davis, a campus police lieutenant walked along a line of seated students and pepper-sprayed them at close range, casually, one after another. Video and photographs spread within hours, and the image of the officer mid-spray was cut out and pasted into hundreds of other pictures — a Renaissance fresco, the Constitutional Convention, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road.