[CH] Heat over police pepper spray
The Old Bear (oldbear@arctos.com)
Fri, 13 Aug 1999 19:34:07 -0400
Gosh, I love what people send me in my morning email. The following
is a news clipping forwarded to me by a friend. I submit it to you,
without further comment, for your erudition and entertainment...
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Friday, August 13, 1999
Heat over police pepper spray
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CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS -- Many doctors and law enforcement
specialists say it sounds crazy. Nonetheless, police here assert
that they instruct their officers that a potent anticrime weapon,
pepper spray, is less effective against Mexican-Americans, Cajuns,
and other ethnic groups, because of their fondness for spicy foods.
Without supporting scientific data, Cambridge officers are instructed
that some minority group members and individuals who are exposed at an
early age to hot peppers, either in diet or in the fields or in food
processing plants, develop a tolerance to pepper spray, which is used
by police to temporarily incapacitate belligerents.
Frank Pasquarello, a spokesman for the Cambridge Police, said he saw
nothing wrong with presenting such information, which he said was
discussed by a Cambridge Police Department instructor at annual
training sessions at the Cambridge Police Academy in a professional,
uninflammatory manner.
"He's not slandering anyone. He's not making fun of any ethnicity,"
said Pasquarello. "He's teaching the class based on information he's
received. If he feels, as an instructor, it's benefiting the officer
as well as the person who might be subjected to this, then it's
correct."
Added Pasquarello: "We've never been given any classes that say
people from certain ethnic grouops should be sprayed longer than
others. You don't give a [longer] burst to a person who is Mexican,
Latin American, or Chinese."
But the disclosure, which was reported yesterday in the Cambridge
Chronicle, has alarmed leaders of minority groups who worry that the
training will send a subliminal message to officers that members of
certain ethnic groups should be sprayed more aggressively than others.
"I think people will laugh when they hear this -- it's so ridiculous,"
said Manuel Macias, a lawyer who assists Central American refugees
at Centro Presente in Cambridge. "But it's a laugh with irony and an
edge because of the knowledge that these officers think you are
physically different."
James Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University,
said he wondered why ethnic distinctions would even be mentioned in a
training program - even if they were correct. "This is disconcerting
that training would venture into such areas," he said. "These are
road-brush generalizations that are questionable factually and of
limited value logistically: How do you tell the difference between
whether someone is a food handler or not? By whether they have a
chef's hat on? There are many Hispanics who can't tolerate spicy
foods."
The training programs are taught by Cambridge Police Officer Frank
Gutoski. "The people it doesn't affect are people who have consumed
cayenne pepper from the time they are small children, and this
generally breaks into ethnic categories," Gutoski told the weekly.
Pepper spray, a mixture of cayenne pepper and natural oils, is sprayed
from a pressurized container. It is a nonlethal device that is used
by law enforcement officers around the country. It is effective only
when sprayed directly into the face or eyes. It causes severe burning
for about 45 to 60 minutes.
Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston's police departments all have
policies regulating the use of pepper spray, which is to be used only
to incapacitate people who are resisting arrest and after a warning, if
there is time.
Gutoski, who could not be reached by the Globe, told the weekly that
people who worked in produce departments, processing plants, or who
handled cayenne peppers regularly were less susceptible to the effects
of pepper spray.
He said that he received the information from the Massachusetts
Criminal Justice Training Council, which trains members of police
departments across the state.
But council director Kevin Harrington flatly denied that such
information was a part of that organization's curriculum. "This
is not something that's condoned by our agency at all," he said.
Medical specialists and pepper-spray manufacturers said there was
no scientific evidence that any particular ethnic group were
desensitized to pepper spray when it was sprayed in their eyes.
"That's an extremely dangerous jump to make," said Dr. Michael Burns,
a toxicologist and emergency medicine physician at Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center. "This is based on what they call hearsay."
Jack Baugher, the president of Security Plus, a pepper spray
manufacturer based in Yakima, Wash., was even more blunt. "It seems
crazy," Baugher said. "It's like saying that because you're an iron
worker, you're less susceptible to being killed by a bullet."
While none of the officers interviewed in Cambridge, including
Hispanics, saw anything wrong with the training program, Latino
police elsewhere questioned its logic.
"I don't think you can build a tolerance to pepper spray just because
you eat peppers," said Lieutenant Manuel Rodriguez of the San Diego
Police. "Our experience here, with a 25 percent Latino population, is
there is no difference ethnically in how people react to pepper spray."