A student was arrested for vandalism, and a UCDPD officer fired their service pistol in the process of the arrest
By Rivers Stout — campus@theaggie.org
On May 24 at roughly 1:40 a.m., a UC Davis Police Department (UCDPD) officer fired their service pistol while chasing and arresting three suspected vandals. One of the three individuals was Cheyenne Xiong, a UC Davis student who has since been charged with a felony for the alleged act of vandalism. Alongside this, she faces trial from the Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs (OSSJA) that could threaten her ability to remain a student.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) at UC Davis has since begun to support Xiong in her OSSJA case and created a petition that demanded her case be dropped and that the university instead focus on investigating the UCDPD officer who discharged their service weapon.
Shasun Sulur, a graduate law student and spokesperson for NLG, highlighted the organization’s objectives.
“The National Lawyers Guild here at UC Davis is a group of students who are interested in progressive movement lawyering,” Sulur said. “We organize here at King Hall around issues of accessibility, divesting from Palestine and pushing administration [alongside] other groups on campus to get divestment on a larger scale.”
Many public faces and organizers of last year’s pro-Palestine movement were King Hall students, including members of the NLG.
Sulur expanded on the petition’s goals.
“The OSSJA is the student conduct division of the UC Davis administration,” Sulur said. “They handle all sorts of issues like academic dishonesty and cheating, to any sort of violation of the UC Davis Code of [Academic] Conduct for students. It’s a panel of members who investigate [possible violations]. What we’re asking for is full transparency around this process and also for them to drop the charges entirely and investigate the officer instead.”
Xiong’s hearing has been postponed three times, and Sulur speculated that the last postponement was due to the petition. As of the date of publication, the OSSJA case has been postponed to December.
Sulur further critiqued the actions of the OSSJA and expanded on what their findings could mean for the trial.
“We’re glad as of right now, because [Xiong] is also facing criminal charges in the county of Yolo and anything the OSSJA finds and publishes in their report can be used in the criminal trial against [Xiong], which can carry a term of up to three years for felony vandalism,” Sulur said. “Again, this is a member of the UCD community — she’s a 20-year-old student here on campus. The OSSJA instead of protecting her life, safety and well-being, is possibly putting her at risk of up to three years in prison.”
Sulur explained that Xiong’s fifth amendment rights could be potentially infringed upon in this trial. Under the fifth amendment, Xiong has a right against self-incrimination and a presumption of innocence which Sulur argues the OSSJA trial may violate.
“There could be a question of constitutional protections for [Xiong] in criminal trials,” Sulur said. “What this OSSJA investigation does is already make an assumption and decision about her conduct and basically deems her guilty or not guilty before she gets a fair trial in front of a jury.”
The university has yet to publicly investigate the officer’s use of their firearm, or make a statement, but the UCDPD police chief has submitted the instance to the Independent Police Accountability Board.
When asked if there’s a minimum amount of signatures needed to dismiss the case, Sulur said the following.
“We’re hoping for overwhelming pressure,” Sulur said. “The OSSJA is not a democratic institution, it is a part of the administration that will conduct its own investigation and release its own findings. We want to show them the overwhelming amount of students and community members who believe these charges should be dropped. The OSSJA has not told us what it will take to drop these charges to clear [Xiong’s] name […] They’re not being transparent enough, not only to the community but [to Xiong] herself. These decisions are made behind closed doors.”
Sulur commented on the behavior of the OSSJA and University of California as a whole, believing that their ongoing support for the University of California Police Department (UCPD) is affecting the ability of students, especially students of color, to feel safe on campus.
“This is really emblematic of a larger trend of the [University of California] supporting and funding the UCPD on this campus,” Sulur said. “This UCDPD officer needs to be investigated and held accountable […] The UC is prioritizing UCDPD on campus, harming students both in terms of the officer firing their gun during the arrest, as well as how this can be used in [Xiong’s] criminal trial.”
Xiong was unavailable for an interview due to her ongoing criminal trial.
Written by: Rivers Stout — campus@theaggie.org
