State lawmakers are calling for greater oversight of campus police departments after investigators blasted University of California, Davis, administrators and officers for pepper-spraying demonstrators — a police action that drew widespread criticism after a video went viral, the Associated Press reports. In a report released Wednesday, a UC Davis task force said the decision to douse seated Occupy protesters with the eye-stinging chemical was “objectively unreasonable” and not authorized by campus policy.
“The pepper-spraying incident that took place on Nov. 18, 2011, should and could have been prevented,” concluded the task force created to investigate the confrontation…