Why do Police Officers Use Pepper Spray?
Pepper spray is for those who resist violently. Period.
Passive resistance can be dealt with otherwise. More safely.
When pepper spray became a mainstream law enforcement tool in the 1990s, it was hailed as a relatively peaceful alternative to harsh physical violence.
But as demonstrated by the routine spraying of Occupy Wall Street activists, culminating in the horrific assault at the University of California, Davis, pepper spray can too easily become a tool of first and excessive resort.
“I can’t get into the head of people using it in New York and Davis and around the country, but it seems that rather than turning to other tactics, they turn to the simple tool,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. “There’s an overreliance on technology.”
The incident at UC Davis, where campus police officers sprayed Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream directly into the faces and mouths of sitting students, provoked both moral disgust and a renewed attention to the physical dangers of pepper spray. Far from being what one Fox News pundit called a “food product,” pepper is a dangerous and sometimes deadly weapon.
Please read on.