Casual Cop Pepper Spraying Everything

By Hege Brokke Flateboe

The meme was developed after the UC Davis pepper-spray incident, which occurred on November 18, 2011, during an Occupy movement demonstration at UC Davis. The picture of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper spraying demonstrators spread around the Internet, and quickly became an Internet meme. People around the world started to insert the pepper spray photo into famous works of art and popular culture. 

One of the original photos of Lieutenant John Pike pepper spraying seated students at the UC Davis protest was taken by Louise Macabitas and posted to Reddit[1] on November 19th, 2011.

Compound by previous episodes involving the police pepper spraying against the Occupy protesters, the incident was quickly picked up by almost all major U.S. news media outlets.  On November 20^th compilations of the images began appearing on Facebook community Occupy Lulz  and BoingBoing. The 21^st November the photo had reached the Washington Post, ABC News, the Metro, Gawker, and Buzzfeed. The same day four separate single topic Tumblrs were created. On Reddit “andersmh” created an interactive Pepper Spray Cop, where you could use the cop and shoot pepper spray throughout the meme created with the painting Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull.

The Declaration of Independence with the pepper spraying cop

The meme peaked (according to Google trends) during November 20 – 26, 2011, and since then its popularity have been decreasing.

Megyn Kelly: Pepper Spray is a Food Product

A notable meme that occurred after Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly appeared on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the UC Davis pepper spray incident. Kelly here managed to call pepper spray a food product. And of course this was picked up and eventually became a meme.  

Megyn Kelly

Twitter, Amazon, and YouTube
The meme also generated spoof reviews on Amazon for the specific brand of pepper spray canister that was used by Lt. John Pike.   Amazon reviewer D-bag of Liberty wrote:
“Whenever I need to breezily inflict discipline on unruly citizens, I know I can trust Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray to get the job done! The power of reason is no match for Defense Technology’s superior repression power.”

There was also created a fake Pepper Spraying Cop Twitter account, @PepperSprayCop. The account provided satirical commentaries on the development of the meme. @PepperSprayCop had acquired over 1700 followers in February 2013.

A Downfall parody of Hitler reacting to the viral rise of the Meme was uploaded by YouTuber Sarahharbin: 

YouTube musician Andrew Lusk uploaded a tribute song titled “Pepper Spray Cops’s Lament”, I couldn’t find the video, but it was played during a CNN report. YouTube musician Jimmy Page also posted a tribute to Lt. John Pike, the song was called “Dear John (The Pepper Spray Song)”. The voice actor behind Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, Harry Shearer, also released a song titled “Ballad of Pepper Spray Cop” via Soundcloud. 

https://soundcloud.com/lelink/ballad-of-the-pepper-spray-cop

Bonus: 
On November 19^th, the Anonymous, in support of the Occupy Movement, released contact information, house address and salary records of the UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike.

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