Pepper Spray Creator Appalled By UC Davis Incident

So appalled.

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This was definitely the week that pepper spray took the world by storm.

Kamran Loghman, the man who helped the FBI make it a weapon back in the '80's, has denounced its use against peaceful student protesters on the campus of UC Davis. In an interview, Loghman said "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents."

Loghman, who also helped to create guidelines for police department use of the spray, added that use-of-force manuals mandate that it should only be used if someone poses a physical threat. There's nothing intimidating about a bunch of kids sitting in a circle, but this brings up an interesting argument: would people be satisfied if physical force had been used rather than pepper spray?

The way we see it, serving facials to a group of non-violent students constitutes as excessive force, especially considering the potency of the pepper spray and the distance at which it was used. Again, the recommended minimum distance is 6 feet, and campus police officers were right in the faces of those kids. In an interview conducted last weekend, one student said he caught a throat full of pepper spray. Although he couldn't confirm it, he mentions that others said they saw Lt. John Pike intentionally spray down his throat.

[via The New York Times and Boing Boing]

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