Video images have surfaced online showing a police officer at a California University calmly pepper-spraying a line of several sitting protesters, who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.
The chancellor of the University of California, Davis said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a university faculty group called for her resignation because of the incident on Friday.
"The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this," Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school's website.
The officers' reaction to the protest, held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement, and the ensuing video images, which were circulated on YouTube and widely online, prompted immediate outrage among faculty and students, with the Davis Faculty Association saying in a letter yesterday that Katehi should resign.
She was expected to speak at a news conference later yesterday.
Images of police evictions have served to galvanise support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Oregon.
The forcible Oakland protest eviction, the first of its kind on a large scale, marred the reputation of the city's mayor and police department while rallying Occupy encampments nationwide beset with their own public safety and sanitation issues.