In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue."A recent training exercise revealed that this pepper spray presents a significant risk of causing eye injuries to subjects who are exposed to this product," said state police Trooper Maria Finn.
That is what they have tasers for.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/09/uc-davis-students-in-1m-in-pepper-spray-settlement/
Just heard about this on the news. These guys got a $30k settlement for getting sprayed.
Apples and Orangutans. In this instance the OC performed correctly, but the judge ruled that the police shouldn't have used it aggainst the students, and were liable for their use of force.
Exactly! The argument was the inappropriate USE of pepper spray by the officers upon the students. Nothing about bad pepper spray, although of course, several students CLAIMED to have suffered permanent effects, i.e. poor grades, assorted physical ailments etc.(want some 'Obama money'?), after being sprayed. I would challenge anyone to find hard, scientific data to support the claim that capsaicin in a vapor form (or any form) can cause permanant physical damage after a 1-time exposure. The University settled with the students.
Makes me glad I was never required to carry that on duty.
If you never had the chance to use it, there was a whole new level of joy that you missed out on.
Being sprayed in training was a blast! LOL!
Oh we got sprayed at least once a year, but I was never required to carry the stuff (.mil). Thinking about it gets my eyes watering and nose running a bit.
Yea ,posting that in this threadd looks misleading, the OP refers to a poorly titled article about PASP issuing a department recall on OC spray, due to lasting injuries suffered by officers. Cjl7's post "Just heard about this on the news. These guys got a $30k settlement for getting sprayed." does not refer to the injured officers in the OP article or anything to do with it, the article is about students that got sprayed during a protest winning their lawsuit aggainst the police. It really doesn't belong in this thread.
There have been instances in the early days of OC spray causing permanent damage, although the capsaicin AFAIK was never at fault, it was the carrying fluid, dyes, oils(one early formula used light weight peanut oil and caused alergic reactions) additives, propellants and other "inactive" ingredients. Some OC sprays used a flammible light oil or alcohol as a carrier, and static, tazers, or other ignition sources caused a few criminals and police to burst into flames. All in all OC spray has been proven about as safe as any effective weapon ever has, literally millions of people are sprayed, many as required training, some sprayed in defense, and the modern formulas only have a handful of instances of alergic reactions or long-term injury. In the OP's article, this is part of the reason these sprays are tested so frequently, a problem with the formula was identified, and is being corrected.