Once upon a bad dream
The term “pepper spray” is grossly misleading. It conjures up images of chopping onions, or going to the bathroom after handling chillies without properly washing your hands first.
For some Republican Congressmen it may suggest a healthy portion of vegetables packed into a convenient dispenser, like a sort of gaseous pizza.
In reality, calling the weapon used against UC Davis students pepper spray is like saying that Goldfinger threatened James Bond’s crotch with a laser pointer. Deborah Blum has written a great article about this over at Scientific American (worth reading in full), in which she points out that at roughly 5.3m Scoville units – around a thousand times more potent than Jalepeno peppers – the spray carried by law enforcement officers is a “potent blast of chemistry.”
In history it has been used as a form of torture, and many would argue that its use in recent times carries similar intentions – not a way to preserve peace, but a means to break up peaceful protests .
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It would clearly be preferable if the police didn’t have to carry pepper spray, but there are doubtless times when its use is appropriate. The issue here isn’t whether the police should ever use pepper spray; it’s why they chose to use it in this instance, at a peaceful campus protest.
It’s understandable that police responding to a protest want to be ready for any eventuality – if you want peace, prepare for war – but it seems the officers didn’t just turn up at UC Davis prepared for a fight, they came looking for one. That made them dangerous with or without pepper spray.
(Source: thecolortwo)
