April 17th, 1997
Sugar, Spice and Pepper Spray -- A clash with students at Argyle Academy in Verdun suggests police are using excessive force on minors.
By Jacquie Charlton
After 14-year-old Amanda Maxwell was pepper-sprayed by a policewoman at Argyle Academy in Verdun last monthre, she plunged her head in a sink full of cold water to ease the burning and blindly called out for her mother. Later, at the Children's Hospital, emergency doctors had to consult a toxicologist to determine how to treat her burns: as pediatricians, none were familiar with prodedures for pepper-spray burns.
The incident at Argyle on March 20th during which Maxwell and roughly 35 other high school students were shoved, pepper-sprayed or clubbed by seven police officers, raises questions regarding the police's use of force on minors -- some of whom may be of slight build like Maxwell. It also suggests that pepper spray, a painful and potenially life-threatening "less than lethal" weapon, might sometimes be used indiscriminately.
The fracas at Argyle began when a black Grade 10 student and a white Grade 9 student in the schoolyard had a fight involving a knife. According to Station 16's Constable Richard Magnan, the fight was a big event: kids had come to watch from as far as Janes Lyng and Riverside high schools. Neighbours called the police, who arrived on the scene only after the fight had finished. Then, as Argyle teacher Richard Hewitt explained it, the schoolyard dust-up just "expanded and expanded and expanded and expanded."
Versions of what happened next differ depending on who tells the story. Police moved to arrest one of the youths involved in the fight. At the time, according to the police, the boy's sister began hitting the arresting officers and other students leaped in to help her. According to one of the students, however, police were yelling out orders and began shoving students who did not move quickly enough.
A melee ensued and an officer was hit in the face with a metal pipe (his assailant, not an Argyle student, ran away but was later apprehended and charged). More police were called and finally, after the clubbing and pepper-spraying of several students, things quieted down. Five students were arrested and charged with crimes ranging from assault with a weapon to resisting arrest.
One of the students arrested, who can't be named because she is a juvenile, described her role in the fight. The girl was pushed to the front of a crowd of kids, too close for comfort to a policeman who grabbed her by her throat and held her across her breasts. She said "get off me" a few times before hitting him. According to the student, the officer moved her down the stairs saying, "You little whore, next time I'll punch your face," handcuffed her and then pepper-sprayed her in the face. At the station, the girl says no effort was made to flush our her eyes during the 10 hours she spent there. She suffered bruises and a slight fracture which required a cast. She was charged with assault and resisting arrest.
Amanda Maxwell's story is more disturbing. Maxwell said she was pepper-sprayed once in the face for three seconds -- according to MUC police protocol, pepper spray is to be administered for no more than one second -- after attempting to pull her friend away from the police officer holding her. When Maxwell fell to the ground choking on the pepper spray, the policewoman who sprayed her lifted her by the clothes and sprayed her in the face again.
Maxwell suffered a concussion when she fell and for the next few hours went in and out of consciousness. Maxwell said police made no effort to treat her, despite the fainting. She has a history of asthma, which have been the reason for her unusually severe reaction to the pepper spray. Maxwell was kept under observation a the Children's Hospital overnight and was treated far a scatched corea.
The girl's mothers and the mothers of other students involved in the incident ask the same question: what's going on when the police can be this brutal to kids?
Says Constable Magnan: "I've been in the police 27 years. In my wildest dreams, to go into a school and beat up 14-year-olds -- I just never would have thought it possible. Students were attacking police officers. Otherwise we would never have used pepper spray on kids."
Magnan says three police officers were hurt in the fight, sustaining injuries ranging from a broken nose to scatches.
Police protocol on pepper-spray use is strict, stating it can only be used if verbal, then physical, coercion has failed. "We don't go in and spray everybody just for fun," says Magnan. "If they used pepper spray it's because they felt they were in danger."
But not everyone seems to believe the police are as reserved as they claim. Democratic Coalition/Ecology Party councillor Marvin Rotrand was instrumental in the push to equip Montreal police with pepper spray. And while he still believes in its value as an intermediate police weapon, Rotrand now says he's concerned about what he sees as an increase eagerness to use pepper spray. "It was not made to be used against students at Argyle. That's not what pepper spray is all about," he told the Mirror. Rotrand raised the Argyle incident in Council last week, and on his recommendation the MUC PUlbice Security Committee has scheduled a meeting April 30 to look into the MUC police's use of pepper spray.
Sergeant Andre Guertin of the RCMP's Public Affairs Department defends pepper-spray use against minors. "When there's a strapping 17-year-old who weighs 200 pounds, yeah, you might have to use pepper spray," he told the Mirror. When Guertin was asked if he thought pepper spray should be used against a 110-pound girl, Guertin said, "If that 110-pounder carries a baseball bat, anything goes, you know?" Guertin refused to comment when asked whether pepper spray is justified if the 110-pound girl were unarmed.
Sarah Acott of the Toronto-based Justice for Children and Youth says conflicts between young people and the police often arise because the latter lack proper training. She says that, to the kids, the police often seem present only to provoke them. Says Scott: "Sometimes it just takes the right language to defuse the situation."