Quote:
Originally Posted by Solumina
Yeah, that isn't exactly how things have been going down V. Also pepper spray can cause serious problems for people with asthma or those who have allergic reactions, hell it has even been linked to the deaths of perfectly healthy people. Sure it's rare for a deadly reaction to occur but pepper spray is on the same level as tasers and for use against protesters who aren't being violent it is unquestionably wrong.
I fully support police doing what needs to be done but the police shouldn't needlessly escalate things.
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This is really two arguments. The first is whether using pepper spray was the right choice, and the second is whether pepper spray was necessary.
For the first, you need to look at pepper spray and it's applications as opposed to other means of force.
Pepper has been known to be a factor in fatalities, yes. It is unfortunate, but the vast majority of people do not have long term injuries from it. It becomes more and more risky to use the larger the number of people that you intend to expose to it at once. When you are dealing with a large group of people, you can't individually ask them if they would suffer serious side effects from pepper spray.
As opposed to other forms of force, pepper spray is best used when you intend to restrain a large group of people. Tear gas is better for dispersion or canalizing people because it's a static deployment and doesn't require active application to be used. Tasers can't subdue a large group of people, and to attempt to do so would expose the police to harm. Bean bags are very dangerous to use en mass because you have to prioritize who you shoot. The more people you have to decide between, the less the time you have to analyze them. That increases the likeliness of misapplication, which could result in serious injury as well as death. That leaves physical force. You can't argue that physically restraining someone without pepper spray is less dangerous then doing so with. If the suspect is fully able to resist, it would require greater and greater physical force to subdue them, and the chance of either the police or the suspect being hurt increases because it's a lot harder to control then pepper spray. In the instance of the UC Davis students I mentioned, I really doubt that that mob would have taken it anymore lightly if the students were physically restrained without pepper spray to make them less able to resist. It would certainly have appeared more violent (as opposed to The Man using his power and authority). On top of all this, you need to understand that the police do not get to chose what they are issued. Of everything, pepper spray was the obvious choice.
As for why it was necessary, you need to understand something about their perspective. There are a lot of factors that I doubt you considered.
The first is that they did not have a choice. It doesn't matter how they feel about arresting people, how they feel about violence, or how they feel about pepper spray. The fact is that they are tools, and choice is not something that tools have. They are given a job, and they do it, regardless of the circumstances. Without that kind of mindset, they simply could not do their job.
And the moment that someone says "No, I will not comply," they are resisting and the ONLY way to make them is with force. Now, don't misunderstand. Force can be anything. It can be talking, it can be a show of force, it can be shooting someone. But when was the last time you have heard about a cop shooting somebody because they wouldn't step out of the vehicle? That's clearly unnecessary, so in order to prevent that, they have a code that essentially dictates how they should escalate their force. Most start with simple asking again, or trying to persuade with words. Typically after that, physical force is applied, in different degrees. If that doesn't work, you move on to a show of non-lethal or lethal force which is intended to express an intent to use it. Beyond that, there is the actual application.
Something to remember, however, is that sometimes the situation will dictate if it's necessary to skip some of those steps. If, for example, someone were to point a gun at me while I was out on patrol, I wouldn't tell him to drop his weapon. I would go strait to shooting him. His intent is clear, and at that point he becomes an enemy combatant. "But Versus, they weren't being violent!" Yeah, I'm getting to that.
So here's your perspective: Arrest/disperse/whatever a large group of unruly people that will not cooperate, while given a significantly smaller number of officers to provide security, determine who is the highest priority, maintain communication with higher headquarters, physically restrain those people, move to an area that they can be segregated, and provide further security to the people that have been restrained. The standard is to accomplish that task under those conditions while maintaining the minimal amount of exposure (time/danger) to the possibility of injury of bother officers and suspects.
How would you have dealt with the situation?
If you think pepper spray is too dangerous, write your congressman and ask to ban it's use. Don't bash the police for making a judgement call that you all, by providing support, gave them the authority to do.
People scoff that the officers felt threatened or intimidated, but I would bet anything that they have never been the center of an angry mob's attention. Personally, I would be shitting my pants even without PTSD from crowds in Iraq. Training can only take you so far, and it gets easier to make misjudge things when you are scared or apprehensive. Knowing this, it's easier to understand why some people can make cold and calculated decisions. The risk of something going bad, especially people that seem non-violent, is too great. You have to chose between the best of many bad decisions.
I argued with Saya about this, and I wonder if my desensitization to violence has made me underplay all this. In basic, they used pepper spray on us before we fought with pugil sticks, and I've had a few run throughs the CS Gas Chamber. Yeah, they hurt, but never excessively and never more then for a few minutes. I just think that, knowing all this, it's not at all what people are making it out to be. But hey, I wasn't there.