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The Pepper Spray Myth
Jennifer Fox a 19 year old Seattle woman had a miscarriage after she claims the police hit her in the stomach and gave her a shot of pepper spray.
“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’”
She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.
“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.
While there is evidence that she was shot with pepper spray there is little evidence of the physical abbuse she claims.
But this brings up another issue, the myth that pepper spray is safe – pepper spray is dangerous and can be fatal.
As the chart makes clear, commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.
The reason pepper-spray ends up on the Scoville chart is that – you probably guessed this – it’s literally derived from pepper chemistry, the compounds that make habaneros so much more formidable than the comparatively wimpy bells. Those compounds are called capsaicins and – in fact – pepper spray is more formally called Oleoresin Capsicum or OC Spray.
And yes it’s dangerous stuff.
My own purpose here is to focus on the dangers of a high level of capsaicin exposure. But as pointed out in the 2004 paper, Health Hazards of Pepper Spray, written by health researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the sprays contain other risky materials:
Depending on brand, an OC spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents.(3) Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.
We have seen the police spraying it into protestors mouths:
The more worrisome effects have to do with inhalation – and by some reports, California university police officers deliberately put OC spray down protesters throats. Capsaicins inflame the airways, causing swelling and restriction. And this means that pepper sprays pose a genuine risk to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions.
Update:
NYPD pepper sprays man to death
The death of a Bronx man who suffered a fatal asthma attack after cops pepper-sprayed him has been ruled a homicide by the city medical examiner.
An autopsy found that Kemp Yarborough cause of death was by“acute bronchial asthma attack during a physical altercation including pepper spray,” the city medical examiner told the New York Daily News.
30 Responses to “The Pepper Spray Myth”
If this is true it would totally change my belief on the legality of the event at UC Davis. On the other hand since this was played up by the papers at the very first reporting (the claim) then rapidly dropped and we have seen absolutely no video evidence showing this, and there were prob a hundred people there with video as a conservative estimate, the likely hood of any officer having done such a thing is right about zero.
Yea, pumping it into a protestors mouth for sure would have either been caught on tape or at least have eyewitnesses screaming about it to reporters. I’m going to assume a lack of professionalism to some degree, but unless I see it on tape or there are multiple independent eyewitnesses I’m not believing that officers would go that far.
OC is dangerous. It can cause harm. Many if not most departments require medical response anytime someone has been OC sprayed, either FD or ER. Even if someone is completely healthy with no asma at all getting OC in the mouth and throat can cause swelling leading to difficulty breathing. Most dept require officers to be sprayed to receive OC certification and If there are not EMT’s on site, they defiantly are ready to call for aid.
That being said there is nothing safe about any use of force. That is why we call it force. The use of force that has the greatest chance for injury to both parties is simply hands. People are more likely to fight, statistical mind you, and even when the purpose is restraint it is easy to cause injury on both sides. It is important to note that you are more likely to need medical care in a hands on police take down if spray is not used. Few other facts
Cal AG did a study of over 23,000 uses with no deaths
NIJ UCSD study:
..OC exposure did not result
in any evidence of hypoxia,hypoventilation, or respiratory compromise
..OC did not result in any further change in pulmonary function (FVC, FEV1) in either sitting or restraint positions as seen in the original UCSD restraint
study
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/files/RIC/Publications/vilke.pdf
I think the idea that OC is dangerous is true. So? Any use of force is dangerous but what should matter is the justification for that use of force and a realistic judgment on what is exceptable and reasonable to both the public and those we ask to risk themselves to enforce our laws.
This isn’t rocket science (god I get tired of having to use that phrase, but people are sooooo slow to get a clue). The cops who abuse pepper spray are no better than common predators. The stuff is very dangerous, but cops who are too damned lazy to physically intervene and drag protesters to move them (which isn’t dangerous, but requires a some actual work) will keep using it, that is, until an apathetic public figures out why it’s wrong and get up on thier hind legs about it.
I’m concerned about the similarity to the “reported” actions to the Humboldt case where tactics that were used that crossed the lined into unconstitutional. I think somebody did some studying and realized that per the current standard there is no constitutional claim so they decided to stretch things a bit.
I have no problem with communities and things like UC making decisions about how they want police to do business. Part of the problem come when people are ignorant and unrealistic about their expectations. Laying hands on anyone to arrest is dangerous regardless of what those who have never had to do anything like that think. In general use of OC lowers the risk of injury to suspects. These subjects in this event were actively resisting but not violent. There was no action or threat of that to officers but they were actively resisting thus increasing the effort, and likelihood of injury, for both themselves and the officers. They were also doing this in an area with 200+ fellow protesters and observers that, as one sympathetic blogger on here put it were “pressuring” the officers. It doesn’t take an expert in crowd dynamics to know that being outnumbered in an excited crowd that is likely to see any action what so ever as a violent escalation. Please search Crowd Dynamics and Reciprocal Violence if you have any desire to have a clue. They, the officers, had a vested intrest in a quick arrest and removal of the protesters and if OC did in fact make the removal quicker………. well
If the officers were going to remove those protesters they have a arguable reasons for using OC. A better question is whose idea was it to remove the tents and why arrest the protesters who were ineffectively blocking the way to the tents? Why not just go around them? Were they concerned about the situation becoming mobile and fluid thus less controlled and more likely to cause violence? Or were they told by their chief or admin to do so. The questions seems to be focused very strangely if you ask me.
The pregnancy scam is looking mighty thin
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/11/21/pregant-woman-blasted-with-pepper-spray-by-spd-reportedly-miscarries
How dangerous is pepper spray?
Of course in those 26 deaths the ACLU connected with OC none identified OC as a cause of death all but two had significant levels of drugs or alcohol and those two who didn’t “Both suffered from acute psychiatric disorders”.
It’s a bit funny in a bazaar way. Maybe OC did contribute to the deaths of the 26 mentioned in the study. But the funny thing is that without pepper spay statistically speaking the number of deaths would be the same or higher but the general injuries to suspects would be much higher. Lets stop using something that works but can be misused for something that doesn’t work as well, causes more injuries, and has the same possibility of misuse.
Ellis, pepper spray is better then live bullets, beating, and loosing dogs on people, but that sets a pretty low standard – one you accept and I don’t. Again, I applaud the courage of the protesters and condemn the actions of the police.
Fox News On Pepper Spray: “It’s A Food Product, Essentially”
So are Mustard Gas & Agent Orange…
Slamfu,
Why bother? EEllis is the kind of guy who believes cops can do no wrong (unless the guy getting the beating, the tazing or the spraying is him, a member of his family or one of his best buddies), and if by some chance the cops are filmed doing something that looks wrong, it’s because the angle makes the cops look bad, or the film has been edited to make the cops look bad. He’s not all that uncommon of a character which is why the cops who beat Rodney King were never convicted.
Beside which those were DFHs and they had it coming…
For those who are disgusted by seeing police violence used on non-violent political protesters, you can show solidarity with California students and faculty by signing this petition:
http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/signon_ows_ucfaculty/?source=med
OC isn’t “better” or worse. It’s a tool to be used as apropriate. If someone is about to shoot into a crowd I damn well want a cop to use a bullet not OC. You are whinning about the tool and not about when it’s used!!!
No, while I’m generally pro law enforcement I’m far from blind to fact that there are bad cops. I just am able to view things in a logical manor and I have some idea of what the job, law enforcement, entails. I also don’t have to insult or try and demean people when making my points. That you do seem to have to may say something about you rather than your point but in this case I think both are weak.
While OC spray may kill it doesn’t cause miscarriages.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/11/22/capsaicin-and-pregnancy
And a bit more about the “mother”
Fox’s former foster mother, Lark Stebbins, said Fox called her from Harborview after one recent protest but did not mention she was pregnant.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016829484_occupybaby23m.html
My opinion is that pepper spray can be an effective tool. Yes, it has risks. But, as EEllis has said, so does any form of force. I’m sure, if you looked, you could find many people who have suffered injury or even died after even mild physical force from police officers.
That said, I don’t know whether its use at UC Davis was justified. There are two questions that I’d need answered:
1) Was there a reasonable justification for needing to remove the protesters from blocking the path?
2) Where the protesters given an explanation for why they needed to move and warned that pepper spray would be used if they did not voluntarily move?
If the answer is Yes to both of those, to later complain that the police officers put you at risk is nonsense. Other than choosing a method of force that minimizes risk of injury to you and them, the police officers cannot guarantee your safety in that situation. You put yourself at risk. Civil disobedience has its place, but it is risky by definition.
” You are whinning about the tool and not about when it’s used!!!”
Um, you think JSpencer is blaming the peppers? No. There is a bunch of misinformation — spread by people, not the peppers themselves — that this stuff is totally safe, no big deal and therefore can or should be used in the ways it was used at UC Davis — again, used by people, not OC magically jumping into peoples eyes or mouths on its own, as you seem to imagine JSpencer thinks. Hopefully we can all agree that calling it a “food product”, as above, is just straight up BS and apologism, and not an idea perpetuated by the pepperspray itself?
It really does shock me — even though I’ve interacting with you for a long time now — how no matter what sorts of excessive force is used, you are willing to defend it. This was over-the-top behavior from a group of men charged with protecting public safety, who failed in dramatic ways to uphold that duty.
“You are whinning about the tool and not about when it’s used!!!” – Ellis
I think the word you were trying to use is “whining” – but you are still wrong. This is one of those cases where right and wrong are easy to distinguish – that is unless one is allowing personal bias to twist his judgement.
P.S. Thanks roro.
JSpencer, why do you hate peppers so much? Racism against our spicy breathren is bad.
No racism, some peppers are better and not as lazy as those dirty smelly hippies…
…and here’s wishing most of you a pepper spray-free and all of you a Happy Thanksgiving ..
Being pepper sprayed is not safe. Being hit on the head with a club is not safe. being shot with a gun is not safe. Perpetrating any of these acts on non-violent protesters is not right.
er…
That’s it.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2228
A death by gun or club would be considered a homicide, of which there were 2,931 between 2003 and 2009.
Death by pepper pepper spray would be considered an accident unless it were used incorrectly such as maybe the incident cited in the OP. There were 272 accidents during that same time period. How many of those were due to pepper spray and how many due to other forms of force? I don’t know for sure, but it seems that it is 0 or very close to 0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray#Effects).
So, with the information I have, it seems that pepper spray is comparable in danger to other forms of force: carrying, dragging, pushing, pulling, tackling, etc. And the information seems to suggest that it may actually be safer than those forms of other forms of force, considering there has been no documented case where the primary cause of death was pepper spray used as intended.
In terms of fatalities, it is not comparable to being shot or beaten on the head with a club.
That’s quite novel way to justify the use of pepper spray on non-violent protesters sitting in a “student quad”… Especially since, in the case of the Davis incident, UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi said: “Police defied my orders by using pepper spray”
Study after study show that once given access to pepper spray ‘casual application’ by the police occur simply because it’s convenient and easy.
SteveK,
I was not defending the police officers. As I said before, I’d need more information before determining if it was appropriate. Regardless of my answers to those questions, if they were ordered not to do it, then they shouldn’t have done it and they should be disciplined appropriately.
I was responding to epiphytes comparison of pepper spray with beatings and shootings.
Link two then. While I have no doubt there are misuses of OC just as I have no doubt, heck I know some, there are bad cops, I would be suprised to find any study saying what you claim. I would say more but first will give you a chance to links a study since there are so many.
And the silence is deafening. It’s amazing how much of the arguments are false or ignore logic for emotion. Like in this post the “miscarriage” story is almost certainly a lie but in any case the story is so thin and sketchy it never should have been used. Then the “OC spray down protesters throats” that was dropped from all the press long before this story was written and not a bit shown on video, but lets keep repeating it anyway. Going on about how dangerous pepper spay is without acknowledging that it is safer to be sprayed during an arrest than just to have cops put hands on you. Yes there are more injuries to suspects when cops use any hands on force than when they also use pepper spray during an arrest. Like the “26″ deaths SK refers to without mention that none of those deaths were directly caused by pepper spray of that 24 were drunk or drugged up and the other 2 in the middle of psychiatic episodes. People make statements that are not backed up by fact, see above, and use insults when challenged to have real discussions.
This is just in this thread but when asked for for real discusion that type of response is given. What about a real discussion about different tactics and a cost/benefit analysis? What tactics do you want to use and maybe have a discussion about the good and bad aspect of those tactics? Why bother when you can just imply unpleasant things about someone who challenges you. If the case is so dog gone good then why is it so hard to discuss honestly?
The poor thing’s taking a victory lap… He thinks he won!
Life Lesson No. 17: If, once you realize you’re talking to a brick wall, you continue talking… You look as stupid as the brick.
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