This past Wednesday a University of California investigatory report concluded some very predictable things: the November 18th incident on the UC-Davis campus, in which a number of peaceful Occupy protestors ended up getting pepper sprayed, was a debacle that could have easily been avoided. The most obvious assertion was reserved for infamous Police Lt. John Pike, the cop who became a meme sensation after a photograph of him casually hosing down students emerged. The report stated that, “On balance, there is little factual basis supporting Lt. Pike's belief that he was trapped by the protesters or that his officers were prevented from leaving the quad.”But Pike’s portly person wasn’t subjected to incessant Photoshop treatment because he failed to receive certain orders, or even because of the wide amount of space separating him from any potential injury. People were viscerally upset about the events at UC Davis because of the pepper spray itselfThe report points out that the pepper spray used, the MK-9 First Aerosol Projector, was not an authorized weapon to be used by the campus police, nor had the officers been trained in how to pepper spray. However, UCDPD General Order 559 dictates that pepper spray can, in fact, be used, if simply shot out of smaller containers.This segment of the report reveals a major disconnect between the semantics of protocol and the reality of the substance. Shortly after the incident, the writer Deborah Blum observed that pepper spray's formal name is actually OC Spray (Oleoresin Capsicum), "But we've taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious."A 1995 ACLU report cited by Blum identified 26 pepper spray-related deaths in California over the span of a couple years. US military scientists identified severe concerns regarding the use of pepper spray, a substance that is banned for use in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which they connected to possible human fatality. Pepper spray did pass FBI tests, however, one should be aware of the fact that Thomas W.W. Ward, who was head of the FBI's Less-Than-Lethal-Weapons program at the time of the studies, was fired from his position for accepting money from a pepper spray company.In 2000, Tom Hayden discovered a secret attempt by the LAPD to stockpile pepper spray, along with a number of other weapons, to help control the crowds of protestors at the Democratic Convention. The police department buried the request in a $4 million California Highway Patrol proposal," he writes, “which was rejected after the rouse had been exposed.” Hayden, who was in the California Senate at the time, drafted legislation to investigate the adverse health effects associated with pepper spray. It was defeated.One of the best arguments against pepper spray, and by extension the current policing methods used in the United States to control crowds, can be found in a nuanced and objective study conducted by The European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) in 1998 titled, "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control."STOA cites pepper spray as a weapon that can potentially induce "Temporary blindness which lasts from 15–30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts from 45 to 60 minutes, upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for between 3 to 15 minutes."STOA’s overall assessment of crowd control takes an intriguing swipe:The military police industrial complex has spawned an ever growing arsenal of new crowd control weapons offering the dubious promise of even more powerful technical fixes for social and political problems. In practical terms since the main seat of innovation in this area is the United States, this would let an alien American policing culture set the public order agenda in Europe. It would also entail a wealth of unwelcome impacts, including escalation of conflict and a loosening of community support for the police. More socially sensitive alternatives need to be found…After he watched the video footage from UC Davis, Kamran Loghman, one of the people who helped develop pepper spray in the eighties, told The New York Times "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents." This should be the overriding issue we take away when we look back on the events of that day. Not whether or not there were communication breakdowns, but whether the methods frequently implemented are justified at all.In a month the NATO Summit will meet in Chicago and be greeted by a sea of protesters, justifiably perturbed by the behavior of the organization through the years. Some of the weapons being wheeled out to deal with activists will be Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD), designed to incapacitate people through high-pitched sounds (they appeared at Zucotti Park, according to some observers). There has been a lot of local commentary concerning whether or not the city is prepared for the ascending crowds and whether or not the police can avoid mishaps that mirror the failures of places like UC Davis. There’s been almost no discussion about the use of these weapons themselves, nor has there been many references to Karen Piper, a woman suing the city of Pittsburgh because she suffered long-term hearing loss as a result of a LRAD used by the police at the 2009 G-20. As Witold Walczak, the legal director of the ACLU, put it, “Police departments should not be using weapons built for the military on civilian protesters.” It’s hard to shake a stick at that. Or a pepper spray can.
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