They were allowed to leave, they were dragging people away right after. They were "surrounded" but they were not prevented from leaving.

Even at the start of the pepper spray, the circle wasn;t even super close. The videos don't capture that.

The video doesn't do justice to the people that were there. It's similar to the UC Davis Republicans smearing the incident and blatantly lying about it. 

Even when taking into context of the video, there was no reason that the people in the circle should have been peppersprayed in such a show. They were told that they were going to be shot with the paintballs filled with pepper spray. And they were willing to do so since this would have been a huge mistake by the police department.

What really is annoying is still the fact that A) The protest was against police brutality. B) The Police at Davis, honestly, don't do anything. The Davis PD had a bigger reaction to this than the hate crimes that occured.