Incidents of violence, including a shooting and a pepper spray incident, marred this year’s Black Friday shopping event in California.

If police measures taken in response to other incidents in November have set any precedent, then we’ll need hundreds of riot police next Black Friday to disperse unruly shoppers who’ve attracted an undesirable element to the community.

A Black Friday shopper was shot in the parking lot of a San Leandro Wal-Mart around 1:45 a.m. while resisting a failed robbery, after he and his family were confronted by a group of robbers on their way back to their car.

At another Wal-Mart in Southern California, a woman pepper sprayed a crowd, injuring 20 people in an apparent attempt to gain an advantage in a battle for discounted Xboxes.

Violence such as this, particularly when it’s at public gatherings such as Black Friday, tends to raise a major question: Is Black Friday really a safe, wholesome activity for the community? Maybe not.

Large public gatherings have garnered substantially different reactions among media and law enforcement across the country, specifically in California. One prominent example is the Occupy Oakland protest.

Earlier this November at the protest in Frank Ogawa Plaza, a man was fatally shot. This homicide was one of more than a hundred in Oakland this year.

The victim in that homicide had been staying at the Occupy Oakland camp, which had been welcoming Oakland’s homeless population, giving them free food, medical care and a place to stay. There were homeless people in Oakland before the movement began.

But the response of the police and the city in that case of violence at a public gathering of mostly non-violent citizens which had been promoted through social media, among other media, was to deploy hundreds of riot police from many departments to forcibly evict the protesters and disperse them from the area.

So following that example, it only seems fair and logical that we should have a similar response next Black Friday, deploying hundreds of baton, tear-gas and shotgun-wielding riot cops to keep the disorderly mobs out of every Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

As for the pepper spray incident, we have a recent precedent to look to for that one as well. UC Davis police officer John Pike pepper sprayed a group of completely non-violent Occupy protesters on Nov. 18, and was given the harsh penalty of paid administrative leave.

So now that they’ve caught the crazed Wal-Mart pepper sprayer, she probably deserves no charges and a paid vacation, because pepper spray is pretty much justifiable force to use against anybody who won’t immediately move out of your way. Right?