Linda Katehi claimed in a wide-ranging Sacramento Bee interview — in her office in the still-closed-to-the-public Administration Building — that her own police force no longer respects her authority. The UC/Davis Chancellor and global handmaiden to authoritarians made the best arguments for her own swift removal. Using the royal “we” to describe the orders she gave her militarized police force, Katehi showed that her authority and leadership are hollow:

“We told the police to remove the tents or the equipment,” Katehi said in an interview with The Bee in her office inside the administration building, which remains locked down to the public.

“We told them very specifically to do it peacefully, and if there were too many of them, not to do it, if the students were aggressive, not to do it. And then we told them we also do not want to have another Berkeley.”

Additionally, she admitted that her direct, specific orders were cast aside by her troops as they invaded the budding campus #Occupation:

She also said she never would have approved the use of full-scale riot gear by officers sent in to remove the students and that Police Chief Annette Spicuzza was part of an emergency conference call before the incident.

“We told her that it has to be peaceful, that anything else would not be acceptable,” Katehi said one day after Spicuzza was placed on administrative leave along with two officers who used the pepper spray.

Most telling is Katehi’s admission of her very slow-dawning awareness that things had gone terribly wrong on her own campus:

“It looked horrible, horrific, I would say … , ” Katehi said. “I can tell you that I woke up Saturday really early in the morning, like 3 a.m., and I felt like it was a disaster on our hands.”

The video of Lt Pike’s Bull moment Connor was circulating widely on the internet Friday night. Was Katehi really unaware of her own militarized police force’s Friday afternoon terror against her student’s until the following morning?

What did Linda Katehi know about her campus disaster, and when did she know it? And is the “disaster” she refers to the adverse health implications and free speech suppression for her terrorized students? Or were her first feelings for the public relations firestorm she still finds herself embroiled in?

Linda Katehi proves in this interview that her Chancellorship is both fatally disengaged and thoroughly disrespected. Why is the President of the UC system, and why are the UC regents, still supporting her? How long can she hang onto her job? Sign the petition for her removal here.