Chemical War Comes Home to Vermont

From a protest on Feb. 16th..

Critics Question Use of Pepper Spray--Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus
Vermont,USA

If Saddam Hussein's troops had invaded Vermont and done what the Burlington police did last week, the Iraqi soldiers would have been branded war criminals for violating the international treaty on chemical weapons.

On Monday, Patrol Officer Patrick McManamon sprayed Steven Chistianson, 28, with the oleoresin capsicum (OC), a chemical weapon commonly known as pepper spray.

Chistianson was demonstrating against looming US war with Iraq, ruled by Saddam Hussein, who has been condemned for his chemical and biological weapons arsenal. While OC gas is banned for use in war, according to the treaty, it is "not prohibited...for law enforcement including riot control."

"It's an irony," noted Burlington Chief of Police Kevin Scully.

Christianson was one of 150-200 protestors who marched through the chilly streets of Burlington last Monday, stopping traffic and chanting anti-war slogans. When they arrived at the Burlington Free Press, they discovered that US Attorney General Janet Reno was attending an editorial meeting.

Several demonstrators who entered the building to speak to her were arrested and fellow protesters surrounded the squad car in which the trespassers were to be taken away.

Christianson, a behavior specialist at a Vermont public high school, crawled under the car on his back. According to Christianson, officer McManamon went after him on his stomach and told the demonstrator to get out from under the car "or I will OC you."

"What the hell is OC?," Christianson asked, "and then [McManamon] put the can to my face and said `Mace.' I attempted to raise my jacket to protect my face. I had no place to go. He slammed my hand to the ground and then opened fire when the can was 4-5 inches from my face."

Chief Scully, who later said he hadn't talked to McManamon, disputes this account. "He was warned that if could not comply with our need, we would be forced to use the chemical. He was impeding our ability to get our cruiser out of area....The application made him compliant."

Burlington police have been using pepper spray for the last eight years.

"I would guess we use it a couple of times a week," said Scully. "But there may be times in a specific seven- or 10-day period when there may be more frequent use." Chief Douglas Hoyt of Montpelier said he'd "be surprised if it was used once a month, on average, the same frequency estimated by Rutland's Chief Robert R. Holmes. Bombardier guessed that the State Police averaged one use a week. Neither he nor Scully could recall another instance in which the weapon was sprayed on a political dissenter.

Immediately after he was sprayed, Christianson began to scream. "I felt this incredible burning," he recounts, "loss of breath, from the time the cop stuck the spray in my face until 45 minutes later, everything is a blank, just excruciating pain. I have no recollections. All that went through my mind was pain." Chistianson was arrested on Wednesday and charged with a felony: impeding a police officer.

With pepper spray, extreme, debilitating pain is the point. According to the US Department of Justice, "on contact with OC, the mucus membrane of the eyes, nose and throat immediately become inflamed and swollen. The symptomatic swelling produces involuntary eye closure due to dilating capillaries; nasal and sinus drainage; constricted airway; and temporary paralysis of the larynx, causing gagging, coughing and shortness of breath."

The pain is so intense that the National Coalition on Police Accountability (N-COPA) has called for monitoring pepper spray as a form of torture as defined by the United Nations Convention on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment signed by the US last year.

After the FBI endorsed OC in 1987, it largely replaced Mace, a tear gas. "Pepper burns more and is quicker to wash off," said Chief Holmes. "Darn Mace contaminates everything around it."

Since the switch to OC, the Department of Justice and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have received reports that at least 113 people have died nationwide after police used the weapon on them. Eighty of them died after December 1993, according to John Firman, Director of research IACP.

Nonetheless, the Association and most police departments vigorously defend pepper spray, contending that factors other than the spray caused the deaths. Most of the victims were restrained and placed on their stomach, had pre-existing heart or respiratory problems, epilepsy, or were using drugs. The problem, civil libertarians point out, is that police may be unable to determine these higher risk conditions before deciding whether to use the spray.

But, used with discretion, police counter, this less-than-lethal weapon is far preferable for subduing a threatening subject than a blow with a truncheon or a bullet. It generally leaves no lasting side effects, tends not to blow back on the user, and leaves no observable physical effects which can be cited in police brutality lawsuits--a significant concern around the country. The heads of the Montpelier, Rutland, and Burlington

Police Departments as well as the State Police spokesperson all found OC to be an effective and relatively humane weapon.

While most critics acknowledge that OC has advantages over other weapons, they say related deaths are inevitable. They also cite numerous incidents around the country in which the spray was used on restrained or non-violent suspects to mete out "street justice," or inflict punishment. In some cases, people who are simply disrespectful to police have been sprayed.

In New York City, a woman who was stopped by police and sassed them for "trying to reach a quota" of arrests was gassed in the face. The city eventually paid $50,000 to settle her claim of civil rights violation. In a Washington state case, a young black man who mouthed off to police was pepper sprayed after being handcuffed. The victim, who sued police, charged that he was then left in a patrol car with the heat on high for half an hour.

The Vermont Department of Corrections also uses pepper spray. "There have been a few complaints from prisoners of brandishing to intimidate," said Rick Levy, investigator for the Prisoners Rights Office.

On Thursday, Steven Christianson went to the Burlington Police station to request a citizen's complaint form. "When we receive it," said Scully, "we will investigate." The findings will be announced, but the proceedings will remain an "internal police investigation [and] are not considered public information," he noted.

Although pepper spray was officially introduced into the US in the 1980s by the Postal Service as a dog repellent, few studies have assessed its safety and no agency regulates its use, purity, or strength. According the Ken Giles of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, his agency, "which oversees household products like toasters and toys" is the only one with any input. It requires pepper spray to carry the same kind of warning label used for all potentially hazardous products. "In this case," he says and can't help laughing, the label reads "Warning: irritant, avoid contact with eyes."

Pepper spray's Johnnie Appleseed was FBI special agent Thomas Ward who was director of the FBI's Quantico Firearms Training Unit and the bureau's chief expert on OC gas. After the FBI endorsed it in 1987 as an "official chemical agent," it was added to the arsenals of more than 3,000 local law enforcement agencies.

Then on Feb. 12 1996, Ward pled guilty to a single count felony for accepting a $57,500 kickback through a company owned by his wife. The payment was made by Luckey Police Products, the manufacturer of Cap-Stun pepper, the country's second largest manufacturer, and the one Ward touted as an FBI trainer as far back as the mid-'80s. Cap-Stun is now made by Maryland-based ZARC International.

Ward, who supervised, approved, and guaranteed the quality and safety of the pepper spray for the FBI also wrote the main bureau study cited by law enforcement agencies to defend its use. He promoted his product in a widely disseminated official FBI training film cum infomercial.

Although eligible for a $250,000 fine and five years in prison, Ward received two months in prison and three years probation. Despite his conviction, the FBI said it would continue using Cap-Stun since it was "unaware of any basis for finding that pepper spray is not...safe and effective."

Critics charge that the FBI assumption is not backed up by any scientific studies. In California, an average of one OC-related death a month, as well as the recent videotaped use of OC on handcuffed environmentalists, has sparked calls for investigation. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment expressed concern that "the existing database is not adequate to perform an analysis of the health hazards of OC-containing tear gas weapons." There has been no research to find out if pepper spray causes "irreversible damage to the eye or nervous system" or "adverse effects on the developing embryo" or even "genetic damage."

In the meantime some groups have called for stricter guidelines. OC manufacturer, Defense Technology Corp. of America of Casper, Wyo., recommends that its spray not be used closer than three feet from the face to avoid permanent eye damage. Bennington-based Mace Security International, which supplies much of Vermont's OC recommends that the spray be held "8-12 feet away. Eduardo Nieves, MSI corporate communications manager said that distance protect the user.

The ACLU calls for police to restrict the amount of spray to a single one-second burst or two half-second bursts; to avoid spraying subjects who are heavily drugged, mentally impaired, minors, pregnant women; and to decontaminate and closely monitor the breathing of affected subject for up to an hour.

The San Francisco Police Department, which faced a multimillion dollar lawsuit over an in-custody death related to pepper spray, issued its own guidelines: Officers were required to flush a suspect's eyes with water as soon as possible after the spraying; monitor the suspect during transport in an upright position; and provide medical attention prior to booking.

Guidelines for use and safety vary across Vermont. Scully calls OC spray "the first level on the continuum of force" with only "two or three occasions when we have gotten them to the medical center." For the State Police, said Bombardier, it comes higher up the range of reactions. "OC after control and restraint--physically touching--or when you can't get to a subject because of location. Some departments put pepper spray lower," he said, "when a person looks like they are going to attack."

How long sprayed suspects are left to suffer varies with dose and the time it takes to get them back to the station, since none of the contacted law enforcement agencies carries neutralizing agents or water.

Burlington, Montpelier, and State Police Departments do not stock any decontaminants and rely on flushing with water. Rutland has a special eyewash as well as water. "In training," said MSI's Nieves, "we stress to deconaminate instantly.

The purpose of the OC spray is to stop that incident immediately and because person is in such distress, they should be relieved instantly. Cool-It, an herbal extract, should be used right after water gets bulk of the spray off the face." While pepper spray is avialable as a personal protection device, "we sell the decontaminants only to police" and the ingredients "can't be disclosed--even on the label."

Precautions against possible medical emergencies also vary. State Police guidelines include warning victims not to rub their eyes, asking them if they have any potentially dangerous medical conditions, and watching them for 45 minutes.

According to Chief Scully, after Christianson was sprayed, "We would have offered medical advice, but he wanted to get away. We always provide assistance." Furthermore, Burlington's guidelines call for pepper spray not to be used against non-violent suspects. "When demonstrators are peaceful, nowhere is use of force called for....Lying under a car is not violent," the *??TK-year veteran of the BPD continued, "but it is impeding, make no mistake about that. When police not able to carry out their lawful duty to protect safety for everybody, we separate that from peaceful."

But Christianson would argue, his protest against what he considered an unnecessary slaughter was not violent and he posed no immediate threat to public safety. "The police had alternatives. As a behavior specialist, I know there are techniques. They could have backed off and allowed people to vent. There are non-violent tactics and fair warning. They just moved in and started roughing people up."

        ***A-INFOS DISCLAIMER - IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE***

A-Infos disclaims responsibility for the information in this message.



     ****** A-Infos News Service *****
  News about and of interest to anarchists

Subscribe - email MAJORDOMO@TAO.CA
             with the message SUBSCRIBE A-INFOS
Info      - http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/
Reproduce - please include this section