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Pepper spray (in police jargon "OC," for its Latin name of oleoresin capsicum), an oil derived from cayenne peppers, is classified as a chemical weapon, and as such banned for use in war--but not in domestic police work. Pepper spray was introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s by the Postal Service, which used it as a dog repellent. Thereafter, it was quickly adopted by corrections officers and police departments, which adopted it primarily for use in incapacitating violent suspects; the FBI proclaimed pepper spray its "official chemical agent" in 1987. (Helping push OC's use was FBI Special Agent Thomas Ward, who later pleaded guilty to accepting a $57,500 kickback from a pepper spray company.) It's quickly become a common part of the police arsenal: Rikers Island guards have used pepper spray or mace on inmates 1,500 times over the last three and a half years, according to the New York Times (11/8/99).

The pepper spray used by police is highly concentrated--300 times as strong as jalapeño peppers, and five times as strong as the pepper-spray mixture sold for self-defense to the public. When sprayed directly in the eyes, as was done on countless occasions by Seattle police wielding fire-extinguisher-like dispensers, it can create intense, burning pain and restricted breathing unless quickly flushed out. (The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in fact, requires commercially sold pepper spray to carry a caution label: "Warning: irritant, avoid contact with eyes.")

Steven Christianson, who was sprayed by Burlington, Vermont, police during an anti-war protest in 1998, recalled the effects of pepper spray to the Vermont Rutland Herald (2/22/98): "I felt this incredible burning, loss of breath, from the time the cop stuck the spray in my face until 45 minutes later, everything is a blank, just excruciating pain. I have no recollections. All that went through my mind was pain."

In fact, more than 100 people in the U.S. have died in police custody after having pepper spray used on them, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (Vermont Rutland Herald, 2/22/98).
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"Use of pepper spray prior to arrest and then failure to provide medical treatment afterward [can be said to] be objectively unreasonable, excessive force under both the Fourth and Eighth Amendments," according to police misconduct expert Lynne Wilson (Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report, 3-4/97).
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Newsweek criticized Seattle's mayor and police chief for "fail[ing] to give their undermanned police force enough backup until it was way too late," while in the Boston Globe (12/3/99), Lynda Gorov wrote that "police and the city were caught unprepared" for the "self-declared anarchists" who "came ready to rumble."

In fact, it was the police who came ready to rumble. On the public access network Deep Dish Television, reporters were shown specially designed batons with flat edges, the better to cause pain and injury, that were issued to Seattle police. Meanwhile, the police had ordered a fresh supply of $20,000 worth of pepper spray--augmented, after supplies started running low, by a raid on the stores of neighboring police departments, the King County Jail, and the Department of Corrections, while a police captain flew to Casper, Wyo., to pick up a stock of gas from federal agents. As the mayor bragged, "We've given them 'RoboCop' material." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12/4/99)

Peter Cassidy, a police tactics researcher who is working on a book about the militarization of American life, notes that "it was interesting that you saw the National Guard and the police side-by-side doing the same jobs, wearing almost exactly the same uniforms." Also new to Cassidy was the use of "SAP gloves," designer leather gloves with buckshot sewn into them, "so you can whap someone across the face and do more damage than you do with your knuckles."
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You generally had to turn to the alternative, college and international press for in-depth reporting of police treatment of protesters. The University of Colorado’s Colorado Daily (12/4/99) reported at week's end that "hundreds of arrested protesters have been denied food, water, medical attention and legal representation, while others have reportedly been sprayed in the face with pepper spray as they sat in jail cells, shackled with both hand cuffs and leg irons." Agence Presse France (12/4/99), meanwhile, interviewed Direct Action Network spokesperson Karen Coulter, who reported that "Our legal team has gone in and found out that beatings in detention were severe, and there has been repeated use of pepper spray in detention."

Brutality against detainees was reported widely by the Independent Media Center ( www.indymedia.org) and other independent outlets by the end of the WTO meetings, but virtually invisible in the mainstream press, which by then had moved on to comparisons with "anarchist outbreaks" in Eugene, Oregon (New York Times, 12/3/99), and shopkeepers' reactions as "for the first time in several days residents trickled in for holiday shopping" (Washington Post, 12/4/99).

"The problem was, the cops were trained by the federal government to believe they needed to approach this as a military operation," says Cassidy, "and then when people started breaking things, there was no manpower left over to just act like police."

Cassidy worries that the lack of concern over the Seattle police behavior "will lend credibility for other police departments to do the same thing." Which would mean that "opening your mouth becomes something that exposes you to danger. It exposes you to militarized forms of law enforcement." http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1029] Over the weekend, Lieutenant John Pike was photographed casually pepper spraying peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters at UC Davis, turning himself into a full-blown meme and symbol of police brutality. Thanks to artist James Alex, the subjects in paintings have probably become his most famous victims, but the truth is, there’s growing concern for what pepper spray—casual or not—might do to the health of real-life protesters.
By many accounts, the name “pepper spray” is overly benign for a substance that can cause death and be used as a torture device. Deborah Blum wrote at Scientific American:

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…we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.

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But take Jeniffer Fox, a 19-year-old Seattleite who recently suffered a miscarriage, less than a week after she sustained injuries during police action at an OWS protest earlier this month, including the use of pepper spray. While there’s no hard proof that her miscarriage was directly caused by pepper spray, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that it could be harmful to a developing fetus, given the dangers it brings to fully grown adults.
To start, here’s a quick primer on the ingredients in pepper spray that could be harmful to your health:

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Pepper spray’s main active ingredient is oleoresin capsicum (OC)—oil extracted from a genus of peppers known as capsicum (the same kinds of peppers used in salsa, spices, and even some analgesics). But the strength can vary widely between pepper spray brands (the health effects can vary just as much).

Depending on the brand, pepper spray can also contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as a carrier for OC. They can also contain nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons as propellants. Some of these chemicals can have serious cardiac, respiratory and neurologic effects when inhaled in high doses.

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And here’s a quick rundown of what OC can do to various parts of your body (information mostly taken from this University of North Carolina and Duke University research paper):

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Skin - Skin exposure to pepper spray can cause intense pain, burning and even blistering of the skin. It worsens skin conditions like allergic dermatitis, and in severe cases, it can cause hypothermia.

Eyes - OC causes a burning pain in the eyes, inflammation and involuntary closing of the eyelids. In extreme cases it can cause temporary blindness. It can also cause longer-term eye damage thanks to sustained loss of blink reflex and/or anesthesia, which can cause corneal abrasions from contact lenses or other foreign material.

Respiratory System - Pepper spray often causes a burning throat, wheezing, gagging, and difficulty breathing. In extreme cases, it can cause “laryngospasm,” which leads to an inability to speak or breathe. For those with asthma, exposure to OC can even cause death.

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While many of the effects are short-term, some of them are serious enough that the American Civil Liberties Union asked the California Court of Appeals to consider the use of pepper spray as dangerous and cruel, following its use in a 1999 protest. (“The ACLU believes that the use of pepper spray as a kind of chemical cattle prod on nonviolent demonstrators resisting arrest constitutes excessive force and violates the Constitution,” wrote an ACLU lawyer.) http://blisstree.com/live/pepper-spray-dangerous-health-effects-718/2/

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If a person is allergic to any of the ingredients in the pepper spray, has asthma, or has a pre-existing heart condition, then the effects of pepper spray may be more severe and in some cases may lead to death. Part of the reason pepper spray is so controversial is that there have been a number of reported deaths where pepper spray was involved. Though the use of pepper spray has never been identified as the sole cause of death in these cases, it has been listed several times as a contributing factor. http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-safety/securi
ty/pepper-spray3.htm] The study of in-custody deaths concluded that pepper spray contributed to
death in two of the 63 cases, both involving people with asthma. http://www.securityandsafetysupply.com/news/news31.htm death of a Bronx ex-con who suffered a fatal asthma attack after cops pepper-sprayed him has been ruled a homicide - and now his family wants the officers locked up.

Prosecutors are considering filing charges against the NYPD officers who arrested Kemp Yarborough, 37, on March 8 while responding to reports of a street brawl, sources said Thursday.

Yarborough's family and lawyer say the cops ignored the dying man as he pleaded for his inhaler after he was hit with the noxious pepper-sprayed. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-07-28/news/29844285_1_pepper-spra
yed-asthma-attack-nypd-s-internal-affairs-bureau from Wiki:

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For those with asthma, taking other drugs, or subject to restraining techniques which restrict the breathing passages, there is a risk of death. The Los Angeles Times has reported at least 61 deaths associated with police use of pepper spray since 1990 in the USA.[7] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) documented 27 people in police custody who died after exposure to pepper spray in California since 1993.

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Leaving asthma aside, it's just an unacceptable thing to do to people, as is waterboarding:

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The European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) published in 1998 “An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control”[6] with extensive information on pepper spray and tear gas. They write:

The effects of pepper spray are far more severe, including temporary blindness which lasts from 15–30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts from 45 to 60 minutes, upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for between 3 to 15 minutes.

The US Army concluded in a 1993 Aberdeen Proving Ground study that pepper spray could cause "[m]utagenic effects, carcinogenic effects, sensitization, cardiovascular and pulmonary toxicity, neurotoxicity, as well as possible human fatalities. There is a risk in using this product on a large and varied population".[10] However, the pepper spray was widely approved in the US despite the reservations of the US military scientists after it passed FBI tests in 1991. As of 1999, it was in use by more than 2000 public safety agencies.[11]

The head of the FBI's Less-Than-Lethal Weapons Program at the time of the 1991 study, Special Agent Thomas W. W. Ward, was fired by the FBI and was sentenced to two months in prison for receiving payments from a peppergas manufacturer while conducting and authoring the FBI study that eventually approved pepper spray for FBI use.[9][12][13] Prosecutors said that from December 1989 through 1990, Ward received about $5,000 a month for a total of $57,500, from Luckey Police Products, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company that was a major producer and supplier of pepper spray. The payments were paid through a Florida company owned by Ward's wife.
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For individuals not previously exposed to OC effects, the general feelings after being sprayed can be best likened to being "set alight". The initial reaction should the spray be directed at the face, is the completely involuntary closing of the eyes (sometimes described as leading to a disconcerting sensation of the eyelids "bubbling and boiling" as the chemical acts on the skin), an instant sensation of the restriction of the airways and the general feeling of sudden and intense, searing pain about the face, nose and throat. Coughing almost always follows the initial spray.

Subsequent breaths through the nose or mouth leads to ingestion of the chemical, which feeds the feeling of choking. Police are trained to repeatedly instruct the target to "breathe normally" if they complain of difficulty. Wiki

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Which of course the cop who sprayed that line of sitting protesters did, right?

CTS, yes, I skimmed through how the rest of the world treats pepper spray. What I found "amusing" (snark) was that even in places it's illegal and/or considered a chemical weapon, it's okay for cops. In fact, I didn't see ANY place where cops weren't free to use it. I'll leave it to your imagination what Frem would have to say about that, unless he pipes up himself...I think you can imagine.

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A woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries, authorities said.

The incident occurred shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday in a crowded Los Angeles-area Walmart as shoppers hungry for deals were let inside the store.

Police said the suspect shot the pepper spray when the coverings over the items she wanted were removed.

"Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand," police Lt. Abel Parga told The Associated Press early Friday. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/woman-pepper-sprays-black-friday-sh
oppers-15026711

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Chickenhawk or Chicken Hawk is an unofficial designation for three species of North American hawks: the Cooper's Hawk, the Sharp-shinned Hawk and the Red-tailed Hawk. The term Chicken Hawk, however, is inappropriate. Although Cooper's and Sharp-shinned Hawks may attack other birds, chickens do not make up a significant part of their diet; Red-tailed Hawks have varied diets, and although they may opportunistically hunt free-range poultry, it is not a primary source of food.

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Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in the United States to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly supports a war or other military action, yet who actively avoided military service when of age.

The term is meant to indicate that the person in question is cowardly or hypocritical for personally avoiding combat in the past while advocating that others go to war in the present. Generally, the implication is that "chickenhawks" lack the experience, judgment, or moral standing to make decisions about going to war. The term is not applied to those who avoided military service without subsequently adopting a hawkish political outlook.

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