Dear Friend and Reader:
If you watch these videos, it will affect your whole day, so you might want to skip them if you’re feeling fragile. What you’re about to see below is disturbing for many reasons, the first of which is its unmitigated cruelty. I would like to create an editorial or op-ed for the Internet about why this has got to stop.
I am very busy these days and would benefit from some research support, particularly about two things: one is pepper spray itself and the other the rules for using it (which will vary by locale but should have some consistency).
On the first topic, the documents I need to do this include the MSDS for various pepper sprays, any safety studies you can find, and articles from the mainstream and alternative press about the ethics of using this stuff. On the second, that’s a little more open but publicly available rules and regulations, campus policies, police policies, etc. This is two different kinds of research. In truth anyone can do it, with some patience and persistence.
For deep research, ideally for the first, someone familiar with scientific databases would potentially be the best and for the second, a paralegal. If you would like to assist, please either put your findings into the comment area below, or email them to be at dreams@planetwaves.net with the subject header “pepper spray research.”
Thank you for your help.
Editor, Planet Waves
By Mark Memmott
Hundreds were injured and at least one person died Saturday in Cairo when police swept through a camp of protesters in Tahrir Square. A crackdown continues in Syria. Yemen’s oppressive government remains in place.
It’s always important to keep things in perspective.
Still, what happened Friday on the campus of the University of California Davis has struck a chord. In a demonstration of support for the Occupy movement, a small group of protesters was sitting, arms linked together. Campus police told them to move. The students didn’t. And that’s when an officer walked down the line of seated men and women, pepper-spraying them. Some took it straight in their faces. Many of the several hundred others who were there screamed in terror and frustration.
A video of the incident has been viewed more than half a million times so far and has spread the story.
Campus police said the officers had been surrounded by protesters and commanders have defended their actions. So did university Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi — which led to a call from the school’s faculty association for her resignation. Katehi has since said she wants an outside, independent panel to review what happened and that she doesn’t plan to step down.
There’s a second video related to this story that we want to share. In some ways it’s more powerful than the one that’s been going viral.
On Saturday, after a news conference she held, Katehi remained inside one of the university’s buildings for a couple hours. Outside, protesters regrouped. And when she emerged, there was one of the most amazing scenes so far related to the Occupy movement. As Katehi and another woman walked three blocks to an SUV, they passed through a gauntlet of several hundred students — who remained silent in a powerful show of their disdain.
slightly unrelated (not about pepper spray): DC lobbyists offering to help discredit/fight OWS:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up-with-chris-hayes/45366471#45366471
it got a mention on Democracy Now today, too.
The role of a police officer is to cite or take into custody anyone who is not in compliance with the law. The role of the legal system is to determine whether the suspect is innocent or guilty and mete out the appropriate punishment if the verdict is one of guilt. When police officers punish perceived offenders without due process, they are acting outside of their legal authority. Simple as that.
This update was added to a report on Vermont Public Radio’s website. They carried Mark Memmott’s report as well.
>> Update at 2:15 p.m. ET: Two campus police officers have been placed on administrative leave, the university says. And, according to The Davis Enterprise, Katehi today issued a statement saying she wants to speed up the timetable for an inquiry into the incident and that:
“I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage. I have also heard from an overwhelming number of students, faculty, staff and alumni from around the country. I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident.” <<<
NPR was also reporting the campus police involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave.
The Silent Walk of Shame video was incredibly powerful…deeply moving. I hope she looses her job. If she says she takes full responsibility, then she should resign. The violence against the peaceful students incident was disgraceful.
We have to remember that for the last decade especially this country has been held in a virtual lock-down frame of mind due to the government's response to 9-11. For a decade the general public has for the most part kept quiet, crowds were thin, emotions kept in check by fear. We have reached a point where fear is no longer effective. The brave protesters in the Middle East are facing far worse but that has not stopped them. They/we see the results of corruption and it is no longer acceptable to allow it. The angry mobs in southern Europe will continue to boil over because the technocrats that have been installed in those governments are not going to be able to bring any meaningful reform because they are part of the problem. As Einstein said: (as I paraphrase) One cannot resolve a problem using the same mindset that created it.
The same thing is beginning to happen here as well. This crisis took decades to construct and will likely take a good long time to deconstruct and for us to re-engineer something brand new.
The OWS movement and some of the innovations that have arisen from this movement are very positive because they are seeds of solutions that do not come from the mindset that created the problems that gave rise to the movement but rather are genuinely new solutions. I agree with Rami that the human microphone, is one of the most powerfully symbolic creations we have seen so far to come from these first baby steps. Someone will no doubt figure out how to make an App to do something similar…it will loose the fabulous symbolism and power of the human version, but perhaps reach beyond geographic limitations of amplifying the vices of a single location.
Yes, this movement is just getting started, and the Powers-that-Be may think they can keep a lid on this, but they don't know that Pluto has plowed a grove right up their middle. That fault line will not be able to hold together under these pressures. We must re-make the world with a new set of values. The other video posted here speaks beautifully to that. Thank you PW community for being a part of the re-making of the world!!
sorry there are other emails that I’m drawing on. it’s in the thread. in this one he’s explaining a potential motive. I understand where he’s coming from. It’s desensitizing, among other things as well. We have to be conscious where we direct anger and why. It’s also a little scary to watch how much violence they think the American public can stand.
hey eric — where’s the part of the comment where they say “that’s not pepper spray. those students would be screaming in agony if it was?”
or do you mean that’s the implied message in the “many things are staged events” statement?
i’m a little confused here…
How about governance that affords opportunity protected from rampant fraud? Or maybe we’ve come so far from that history that its become impossible for some to imagine governance as anything other than a vehicle for fraud.
As for it being all about deception, I guess one has to ask questions like who shot the video, among other things. Looks to me like real people really protesting real things, getting sprayed with a chemical agent. Could be wrong. If it is deception, a paraphrase of the questions one of the students shouted at police there pertains: who does it serve? Who does it protect?
Someone has emailed me and said, basically what you’re seeing there is not pepper spray. Those students would be screaming in agony if it was. Can anyone conform or elaborate on this?
Here is the whole comment:
ya well, seeing as “pepper spray” is not a food – I doubt the FDA is regulating the potency of its manufacture.*
*(You know, you could turn your Crystal Meth lab into a Pepper Spray manufacturing plant and make a killing>)
And since it’s a weapon that we’ve been conned into beliving is safe (wait! a safe WEAPON? um, I’m confused……)
And BTW, I can’t imagine the pain and damage that would be inflicted by having a jalapeno rammed forceably into my eye…..let alone the chemical alternative with the pretty name.
Reader research:
Pepper spray potency is measured by the Scoville heat scale–a method of detecting the piquance (spicy heat) of a chili pepper. A Jalapeno measures around 3,500-8,000 units while law enforcement grade is 5,000,000-5,300,000 units. Also, the weapons that generally deploy them are (looks like from the video so it’s not verifiable yet) FN-303s which eject a paint-ball like projectiles of the pepper spray. The cop at UC Davis (who by the way is Lt. John Pike Lieutenant John Pike Phone: 530-752-3989 Cell: 530-979-0184 japikeiii@ucdavis.edu..in case you want to say anything to him) didn’t deploy the pepper spray from a weapon but he didn’t need to since he was right on top of the protestors. Evidently there was a fatality from one of these “non-lethal” weapons, according to wiki–FN 303 was involved in a controversial 2004 incident in Boston in which Victoria Snelgrove was shot in the eye and fatally wounded. Subsequent tests by Boston Police indicated that the 303’s accuracy “decreased significantly” after about three hundred firings. This is circumstantially corroborated by testimony of the officer who fired the weapon, stating that he was aiming at a rioter throwing bottles and did not even know that a bystander had been hit.
Speaking of reframing language: let’s kill the term “pepper spray” and start calling it capsicum gas, which is a chemical agent.
This may sound off-subject to some, but I want to suggest some new framing at this point.
When instances of brutality like this occur at the hands of armed authorities, we should say that the victims have been “Wall-Streeted”. I mean this in all seriousness; not facetiously.
We must begin to associate that place with the violence and degradation it spawns and utilizes on so very many levels. We must draw a direct mental and visual link between the seemingly distant fortressed elites in that literal and symbolic den of thieves, and the disgusting abuse of state power against peacefully assembled resistance everywhere. Everywhere people are rising up against the financial machine behind every every institutional leader who allows or orders such crimes. Because they are crimes.
I want to hear this term used every time a protestor is beaten, pepper-sprayed, knocked to the ground, batoned, stepped on, or worse. I want to see it printed in websites and newspapers and magazines and posters across the world. I want to see it filter its way up to the talking heads of mainstream media. Even if those arbiters of news dismiss the term, it will already have found expression through their invalidation. Point the barrel of language back at these thugs.
Do it.
Hi Eric,
I left a few links on the FB page. I have avoided watching the videos, the description in the open letter from the UC Davis faculty member, and the widely broadcast images are more than adequate to convey the violence of these acts. The use of non-lethal chemicals on peaceful protesters is clearly violence in every sense, whether they are permanently physically harmed or not. I see these acts equating to torture, with the intention to inflict extreme pain on the recipients, and to traumatize and frighten other protestors into silence. It is punitive and unnecessary, unethical and arguably illegal.
From a California court case in 2000, finding against pepper spray use on peaceful protesters:
http://archive.ca9.uscourts.gov/coa/newopinions.nsf/04485f8dcbd4e1ea882569520074e698/e2cbc1f5e06a0a4e88256e5a00707763?OpenDocument&Highlight=2%2Chumboldt
This dehumanizing violence I believe is also a “natural” expression of a militarized police force, and an habitually desensitized public. I hope that these flagrant and well-broadcast abuses of power will contribute to a real and substantial shift in the way our culture polices itself.
I am so deeply impressed by the co-ordinated self-discipline of the crowd’s response, where mic-check allowed the crowd to talk to itself, and in a sense, express it’s highest self, and allow the police to pass and ultimately face the greater shame of their overreaction. There is no argument that can be made for just cause on the part of the police action, particularly because the crowd did not turn into a “riot”.
Described here:
http://gavinjcraig.com/2011/11/19/thoughts-on-the-occupy-movement-and-uc-davis-in-particular/
In my many visits to my local Occupy, I have been most impressed with the transformational power of the innovative human microphone. In this era of radically complex and individualized communications tools — which both connect and isolate us in extreme — the human microphone demands active listening and participation in even massive groups. It is as enchanting and unifying as call and response, which is used across cultures and throughout history for different purposes, but here, ANYONE can be the initiator, and EVERYONE is the amplifier. Freeing and unifying, both, at once. And now, also, a tool in times of crisis between overwhelming, over-technologized force, and an unarmed, peaceful collective. We will need a lot of this kind of humane, connected, wise action to dismantle the machine that would devour us.
Love.
Here’s a post from a cop-turned-academic on how he was trained to use pepper spray to deal with noncompliance
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2011/11/dumbass_training_and_the_uc_da033608.php
Quote from expert that this is “standard” police procedure:
https://thesecondalarm.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/police-pepper-spray/
Research on police procedures:
http://www.nlg-npap.org/html/research/LWpepperspray.pdf
Articles on previous California lawsuit against use of pepper spray for nonviolent protest:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2005-05-03/article/21293?headline=Plaintiffs-Finally-Victorious-in-Third-Pepper-Spray-Lawsuit-By-LYDIA-GANS—Special-to-the-Planet
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/yes-of-course-pepper-spray-is-torture.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/17/1037332/-OWS-Participants-Your-Rights-Under-Federal-Law-if-You-are-Pepper-Sprayed-Why-You-Should-Sue-
http://articles.sfgate.com/1997-03-29/news/17744678_1_police-force-police-tool-pepper-spray-task-force
Article from law firm on use of pepper spray in California:
http://www.shouselaw.com/pepperspray.html
And:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5488322_pepper-spray-laws-california.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray
http://www.ddsp.com/mds.htm
Here’s the lyrics:
“Ohio”
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Those are our young people and their silence spoke so much louder than words. It sais, “how could you let our country betray us” to each and every one of us.
Here are some more links:
A general overview of pepper sprays.
http://www.sabrered.com/PDFs/University-of-UTAH-Study.pdf
These two highlight the use of pepper spray specifically for law enforcement and concerns over its use.
http://nopepperspray.org/health_hazards_of_pepper_spray_ncjm.htm
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/pdf/pepperreport.pdf
These two articles are a tad more technical and medically based. I’ve included them to give a good overview of the chemical/medical aspect & uses.
http://www.uspharmacist.com/content/c/14045/
http://ajcp.ascpjournals.org/content/118/1/110.full.pdf
On the whole, no one seems to know exactly what the content of various sprays are. The range is anywhere from 5% to 15%. However, the reaction to the spray varies greatly and even a 2% spray can be more effective than say a 10% spray. This is largely due to the type, variety, and batch which can significantly vary in strength if derived from natural sources. Even lab produced capsaicin is not consistent. And that just addresses the active ingredient and none of the additives.
I could find nothing specifically on the differences between the type of spray used by law enforcement and what is available to the general public in the limited time I had to search. I hope some of this information is helpful to you.
Fe, yes Kent state worth recalling. Cousin was there. It was not so long ago.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-03-kent-state_N.htm
“1970 Kent State shootings are an enduring history lesson” By Rick Hampson
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1119/UC-Davis-pepper-spray-smear-tactics-Occupy-protests-face-rougher-response
Christian Science Monitor reports that
“• On Saturday, MSNBC reported that a Washington lobbying firm with ties to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to promote “negative narratives” about Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests.
MSNBC said it had obtained a memo in which the lobbying firm pitches the negative campaign to the American Bankers Association, saying it could help the industry avoid fallout if the protests result in a Congress that is less friendly to Wall Street.”
Here is an account by one of the students who was pepper-sprayed – with many photos.
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/20/ucdeyetwitness.html
“Interview with a pepper-sprayed UC DAvis student by Xeni Jardin from today
And with the proposed new tuition hikes (on top of the recent ones that already jacked tuition over 50%) these kids and others – like mine – won’t be able to continue in college at all. The protests are personal.
Here’s a link to an MSDS for Oleoresin Capsicum, the main ingredient of pepper spray.
http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9926319
Tin soldiers and Nixon calling. Forgetting Ohio.
Here is a fairly comprehensive study dating back 2000.
http://www.iovs.org/content/41/8/2138.full
I will continue to look for more info. I believe the concentration of pepper spray used by law enforcement is much greater than what the average person on the street can buy and I will look for some studies and articles on this. Hope this helps you.
Hi Eric,
Have you seen this? I found it more upsetting than anything I have seen or read about this incident. It is a letter written by a faculty member at UC Davis. Here is a quote:
“When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.”
http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/
Good luck with your research and thank you for all that you do.
Jen
I just don’t understand… many students just stayed standing with their cells or camaras, and did not interfered when the imbecil police man sprayed the other students, I just don’t understand .. it was fear ? I believe that is the fear that we as humans has to erradicated from our minds. Not to fear to take action, I aplaude to the seating studends and hope they all are safe and in good health.
I think that the bystanders students where the buildt-in audience that the imbecil bully police man needed to show off.
Just my opinion. Love to all.