I was appalled yesterday to read that using pepper spray on students engaged in a nonviolent protest could be considered standard police procedures properly applied.
From an AP story in USA Today:
Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
“When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,” Kelly said. “Bodies don’t have handles on them.”
After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of “active resistance” from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.
“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said.
The video of a nonchalant police officer walking back and forth in front of a line of passive students seated on the ground while spraying then with a canister of pepper spray was shocking.
Perhaps the important question for us–could it happen here?
The Honolulu Police Department has stocked up with some 25,000 pepper spray doses in advance of APEC, and we have a responsibility to ask whether their use would also be “standard police procedure” in a peaceful Honolulu protest.
Does HPD have rules of engagement governing their use of these weapons? I suggest asking your Honolulu City Council member the question. Perhaps a hearing on the subject is in order.
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A few Council members could use a good dose.
Of course it could happen here. Some HPD officers are thugs. Most are not, but some are.
Remember when HPD and other police departments across the country first got Tasers? They were supposed to be used only in lieu of deadly force, to give officers another method of controlling suspects before resorting to shooting them. In reality, Tasers are sometimes used for fun, and other times in lieu of other, noninvasive methods of policing (e.g. talking).
I support the police, in general, but I think some of their methods and attitudes need improvement.
Police over reacted but the police chief and others now face possible disciplinary action. Seems the system is working and we shouldn’t go hyperbolic on this incident. Pepper spray is not all bad. Much less discomfort than a taser, a bit more than tear gas. It’s the apparent casual attitude to the use of pepper spray that is worrisome to me but the offenders will likely pay for their mistakes. No need another cause celebre.
I disagree we can rely upon normal police review procedures to prevent the overuse of pepper spray, tasers or other “less than lethal” methods. Nor is this a matter of individual “thugs” as suggested by Nancy above.
It is pretty obvious that police departments across the country have developed this “casual attitude” towards both tasers and pepper spray. The adoption of such technology was justified as providing police with an alternative to using lethal force. But, as we can see, it is being used as a substitute for other tactics, like negotiations, waiting the demonstrators out or simply lifting the demonstrators, as has been done in the past.
Instead, officers all across the country are finding the pepper spray to be a convenient means of breaking up non-violent demonstrations or punishing civilians who are being “disrepectful” to frustrated cops. Without the availability of pper spray (or tasers), the cops would just have to be more patient.
And when you are dealing with a FUNDAMENTAL right, like freedom of speech, maybe a democracy should insist its police officers be patient?
Pepper spray, tasering, shooting, all are violence against unarmed human beings which should result in arrest & prosecution of the police, security officers. This is not a direction that I want to see our country go..being brutal toward people excerising their constitutional rights.
He looked so casual that it seemed like he was watering the plants or something.
So… I Photoshopped him into a garden.
http://i.imgur.com/eAmFL.jpg
A different take on Baltimore police tactics.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2011/11/dumbass_training_and_the_uc_da033608.php
Peter Moskos
Peter Moskos is a sociologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
“This UC Davis pepper-spray incident from yesterday, in which campus police sprayed a group of protesting “Occupy” students who were sitting on the ground, was just brought to my attention. I don’t know all the facts, but as a former cop-turned-academic, there’s one thing I can say.
In the police academy, I was taught to pepper-spray people for non-compliance. Ie: “Put your hands behind your back or I’ll… mace you.” It’s crazy. Of course we didn’t do it this way, the way we were taught. Baltimore police officers are too smart to start urban race riots based on some dumb-ass training. So what did we do to gain compliance? We grabbed people. Hands on. Like real police. And we were good at it.
Some people, perhaps those who design training programs, think policing should be a hands-off job. It can’t be and shouldn’t be. And trying to make policing too hands-off means people get Tased and maced for non-compliance. It’s not right. But this is the way many police are trained. That’s a shame. (Mind you, I have no problem using such less-lethal weapons on actual physical threats, but peaceful non-compliance is different.)
When police need to remove protesters—whether that’s even the case here I don’t know—it needs to be crystal clear who gives the order, be it the president of the university or the ranking officer on scene. Officers on the scene shouldn’t be thrown under the bus because their superiors gave stupid (albeit lawful) orders. Accountability matters.
And if police need to remove these students, then the police can go in four officers to one protester and remove them. Lift them up and take them away. Maybe you need one or two more officers with a threatening baton to keep others from getting involved. It really can be that simple.
People don’t hate the police for fighting off aggressors or arresting law breakers. They do hate police for causing pain—be it by dog, fire hose, Taser, or mace—to those who passively resist. And that’s what happened yesterday at U.C. Davis.”
Thank you, Ulu, Spot on!
Ulu,
Thank you. That was one of the best comments I’ve seen yet on that incident.
For those of us in the public, it is a bit disturbing when the police officer nonchalantly sprays the demonstrators, and the other police nonchalantly step in and drag them away.
But the police are nonchalant because they were trained over and over to do just this. It’s also disturbing that the cops seem amused when the crowd start booing them. To them, it’s as if people in a neighborhood were booing garbage men when they take away the garbage — something that everyone expects.
But that’s just the point that the police miss: the student demonstrators expected to be taken away by force and were trained and prepared to not resist violently.
The police are trained to incapacitate protesters automatically because police officials look at studies showing how incapacitated protesters cause fewer problems and are less likely to get injured than unsprayed protesters. While that might be technically accurate, it is really very clueless psychologically. The police are simply enraging the crowd and alienating the public in the age of the cell-phone camera. It’s all so very Obama-ish, this smart technocratic efficiency coupled with a complete misreading of people’s emotions, both very capable and very incompetent.
But who are these protesters?
I remember reading an interview in the Honolulu Advertiser, like in the Parade section in the Sunday paper, I believe, ten years ago, with the actress Natalie Portman, who was attending Harvard University at the time. She said that after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, when one went to the Harvard job fair there would be long lines at the military recruitment tables. But she said that this was not due to rage over the murder of thousands in the terror attacks like after the Pearl Harbor attacks, this was because there was a recession at the time and Wall Street was not hiring.
So that’s also part of the background of these protests: young people who expected to make six-digit salaries in their first year out of college but who are unemployed instead. Most of the protesters are not socialists or anarchists, they are frustrated capitalists and consumers.
So both the police and the protesters are over-trained, clueless robots. It’s all very Obama-ish.
“Obama-ish”? What on Earth could that possibly mean in this context? It makes no sense, given the sentence preceding it.
After reading Ulu’s comment, my comment seems so redundant that you might as well delete it.
Herre’s more on pepper spray itself –
http://blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience/2011/11/20/about-pepper-spray/.
The purpose of pepper spray in the UC case was to get the occupiers to unlock their arms so police could remove them, as the chancellor requested. Yes, it worked, but a less-industrial strengths probably would have, too.
Good debate fodder here. Chancellor is charged with keeping the campus orderly so students can proceed with their education. She asked occupiers to leave as night (and a skeleton staff) approached, but they chose to stay. She asked police for help to restore order – apparently when you ask the police for help, you don’t get to specify tactics they’ll use. She seems appalled by pepper spray scene.
So…how does she uphold her responsibility to all students? The only tool she seems to have is expulsion of students. For non-students, arrest for trespassing.
If she called in outside police, she might be limited in what instructions she could give them. But this was the UC Davis campus own police department and she is the boss of the police chief. She has hiring and firing power of the chief. She can demonstrate her accountability by firing the UCD police chief.
And the chancellor has her own boss, UC president, Mark Yudof, who convened a teleconference today with all 21 UC system chancellors. From what has come out, it sounds like he wants them to avoid a repeat of the UCD violence and be more tolerant of on-campus free speech.
UC Berkeley is another scene of a major Occupy movement. Berkeley was, of course, the scene of the major Free Speech demonstrations in the mid-sixties. The UC system should be especially aware of the dangers of excessive repression against students. It only escalates the disorder.
Actually, the police should consider bringing back canine units. They should have three levels of attack dogs.
Level 1, serious threats like rioting, looting, and soccer holigans. Level 1 dogs would be the standard german shepards, dobermans or rottwilers, when a missing arm or two is not an issue.
Level 2 would be for herding homeless camps. Here australian sheep dogs would be great. They just would nip a the heels of the malcontents and push them out of their comfort zones.
Level 3 would be for the wussies class like today’s college students who don’t know how to throw bricks or rocks at the cops as in the 1960s. Pomeranians, chihauhaus or silkies can do their best work licking the faces off of the protestors, and when the get real excited, they may pee on the protesters and that will drive them away.
The pepper spray send counter productive.
The police go from clean people sitting in the streets to Pepper Spray covered people screaming in pain. How is that an improvement?
Why would it be better for police officers to lift or move screaming people who are going to cover the police in the pepper spray they’re all covered with.
What’s wrong with lifting people who are clean and not screaming in pain?
They couldn’t lift them until they got them to unlock their arms. That’s why the pepper spray.
I wish I had a link but the protesters are handed flyers about what to do in case of pepper spray. Take out your contacts, turn your head etc…
Then they instruct people who hit with pepper spray to lay down and scream as loud as they can. A protester who has not been hit with the pepper spray will come to help.
So… If the police think protesters will run if people start getting sprayed they’re suffering from delusions.
Have you seen people running away from the pepper spray in any of the many videos lately? Me either.
Do you see people laying on the ground and screaming after being hit? Absolutely.
Here is an example of how NOT to move a peaceful protester. The woman is a human being. There is no need to dislocate her shoulders or treat act like you’re removing an animal carcass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Q1zHMdfBo&sns=em
This is the proper way to move a peaceful protester. It’s doubtful that you’ll get in trouble for treating non-violent people with more respect than they may deserve.
http://i.imgur.com/Dvk9M.jpg
@Russle – Attack dogs?
I think you might have missed something here. The protesters tactic is to remain peaceful and nonviolent, etc… But also to be a gigantic and disobedient pain in the ass.
Half of the goal is to use annoying but peaceful and nonviolent tactics to BAIT the police into a violent overreaction which will instantly be uploaded to YouTube.
Using attack dogs plays right into their hands.
I don’t even want to know what kind international media-storm will erupt when a few brave protesters LET the attack dogs bite on a pant-leg as they scream bloody murder for the hundreds of people filming the incident.
I guarantee you that it won’t play out well domestically and especially not internationally.
Dave,
Perhaps you used the wrong words to express your thoughts, but I gotta disagree with your claim:
“Half of the goal is to use annoying but peaceful and nonviolent tactics to BAIT the police into a violent overreaction….”
I have been arrested in civil disobedience actions several times over the years, have been involved in the inner circles of those planning for such events and have never been aware of people wanting to provoke a “violent overreaction” from the police.
There is a strong difference between demonstrators WILLING to be arrested and wanting to be arrested. A soldier may be WILLING to die in combat, but few if any WANT to die in combat.
The idea that demonstrators WANT to be attacked by the cops is extremely irresponsible. It minimizes the responsibility of the cops (and their bosses) for the police attacks. Most of the violence in these demonstrations is coming from the police, not the demonstrators. And it is premeditated. The feds have been paying police departments to over-purchase mass quantities of tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, etc. The feds are piling up kindling, pumping in weapons, advising them on tactics and strategy and, surprise, police departments all across the country are simultaneously using excessive force on non-violent protestors.
But I guess the cops are not to blame. Nor are the feds. It was the fault of the crafty demonstrators baiting the cops into beating on them, hosing them with pepper spray. Just as the uppity civil rights demonstrators baited the cops in Birmingham to sic attack dogs on them, turn fire hoses on them. Poor Bull Connor! He obviously was too weak-willed to resist the siren song of the demonstrators just aching to be attacked.
@Kolea – You’re right… They don’t want to be arrested or attacked but enough of them will not run from a baton or mace wielding police officer or attack dog. I would not.
The casual pepper spray cop only hurt himself.
I’m not going to run from anyone who’s only going to shame and humiliate themselves.
A Marine lectures the police on honor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmEHcOc0Sys&feature=related