Saying that New York City police officers must be able to subdue potentially violent suspects more effectively without resorting to lethal force, the Police Department will switch to a more powerful form of pepper spray by the end of the year.
The decision drew immediate criticism, putting the department on the defensive for the second time this month for updating its weaponry without public discussion or oversight. Earlier this month, Police Commissioner Howard Safir's plan to give police officers new hollow-point bullets was postponed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said that the new ammunition required further study.
Pepper spray is an aerosol-propelled mist that is composed partly of cayenne pepper and cause people to gag, cough, close their eyes and sometimes experience shortness of breath. It has been used by the New York Police Department for four years, but in several recent cases, police officials said, the pepper spray has not been strong enough to overcome people.
So the department has begun to issue its officers new, larger cans of pepper spray that can shoot nearly twice as far, 15 feet rather than 8 feet. The new spray is mixed with citrus fibers, which give it a foamy quality and help it stick to its target, causing a stronger reaction.
"We're encouraging the use of pepper spray," said the Chief of Department, Louis R. Anemone. "We wants the cops to use this rather than a nightstick or hand-to-hand combat or the butt of a gun or radio or firing a weapon. We think this is an effective less-than-lethal tool."
In both the old and new sprays, the active ingredient, oleoresin capsicum, which is an inflammatory agent derived from the cayenne pepper plant, makes up about 10 percent of the contents.
Shortly after pepper spray was first widely used in the early 1990's -- largely replacing tear gas and Chemical Mace -- several [!!!!] people who had been exposed to it died in police custody, raising fears about its safety. But after reviewing a national sample of such deaths, the National Institute of Justice concluded that pepper spray did not cause any of them, according to an evaluation of pepper spray that the institute published this month.
The issue is still a contentious one, however, and several people criticized the department's decision to begin giving out the new spray without public review.
"I'm not necessarily opposed to the new spray," said City Councilman Sheldon S. Leffler, the chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee, who held hearings on the Police Department's budget earlier this month at which no one mentioned the new spray. "But it would enhance acceptability if the public was not presented with this as a fait accompli."
Besides subduing suspects, the sprays are sometimes used for controlling crowds. The Civilian Complaint Review Board established a committee to study the use of pepper spray after complaints about the spray rose 254% in 1995, to 85 complaints from 24 in 1994. The board was not informed of the planned switch, and the decision drew criticism from civil libertarians.
"Once again," said Norman Siegel, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, "the Police Department has made a unilateral decision that has a substantial effect on the lives of all New Yorkers, and again they did so in secrecy."
Chief Snemone said that the police have the authority to decide what kind of sprays to use.
"It's an administrative decision," Chief Anemone said. "Certainly, the public is paying the salaries here. They've got what I think is probably the finest law enforcement agency in the country, and I think the public has faith and trust in us and our ability to make these decisions. We've got the public's interest and the department's interests at heart here."
Note: On March 10, Mike Doubet's "The Medical Implications of OC Sprays" was finally released by PPCT Management Systems of Illinois. This costs $12 and is available at (618)476-3535. According to Doubet's research and report, the NYPD decision goes in the opposite direction of what it ought to in just about every regard. It is sharply critical of pepper spray manufacturers for for withhholding information about their products, misrepresenting their products, mistraining officers about what OC can & can't do, and lying about the safety research that has actually not ever been done.