Portland Police pepper sprayed their own police review board members last week

Portland Police pepper sprayed their own police review board members last week
by Chipmunk 5:10pm Wed Aug 28 '02 (Modified on 11:01pm Wed Aug 28 '02)

Denise Stone, a citizens' committee member for the city's Office of Independent
Police Review office, and two IPR staff members were pepper-sprayed while
standing off to the side, observing. The three have reportedly told IPR Director
Richard Rosenthal that they saw no provocation by protesters for the mass
spraying. Similarly, other non-protesters told WW the crowd had been festive and
non-threatening.


TUSK, TUSK
Observers say the cops went too far in protecting Republican donors from protesters.


Red-Pepper Blues

BY NICK BUDNICK
243-2122
_____

Last Thursday's visit by George W. Bush may have seemed like a return to the bad old days of
cop-protester clashes, but it actually represented a significant escalation of the Portland Police Bureau's
crowd-control efforts.

On at least two occasions, police used red-pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse a mostly peaceful
crowd behind police barricades around the downtown Hilton, where Bush spoke at a fundraiser for Sen.
Gordon Smith.

When police wanted the crowd to move back, they would order them to disperse, then start advancing.
Many officers swept their red cans of pepper spray back and forth, spraying protesters and non-protesters
alike--even some who were attempting to comply with the order to disperse.

This represented a break from past police practice, in which so-called less-lethal weapons have been
used more discriminately, typically against specific targets. Crowds were pushed back with batons and
intimidation--not pepper spray.

Assistant Chief Greg Clark, who was in charge of this operation, told WW that police first used the spray at
Southwest 5th Avenue and Taylor Street in response to the crowd blocking the entry of several
reinforcement units, with protesters even jumping onto the hood of a police car.

But according to multiple sources as well as media accounts, the hood-jumping incident did not occur until
after the widespread use of red-pepper spray.

Denise Stone, a citizens' committee member for the city's Office of Independent Police Review office, and
two IPR staff members were pepper-sprayed while standing off to the side, observing. The three have
reportedly told IPR Director Richard Rosenthal that they saw no provocation by protesters for the mass
spraying. Similarly, other non-protesters told WW the crowd had been festive and non-threatening.

Another point of controversy is the degree of warning given. Assistant Chief Clark maintained that each
mass-spraying commenced only after the crowd was given three to five orders to disperse or risk arrest.

But at 5th and Taylor, numerous bystanders and non-protesters said they heard no warnings. "If there were
any warnings, I did not hear them," says the IPR's Stone.

Beth English, a photojournalist with Channel 12, was taken to the hospital after an officer blasted her in the
face from about a foot away. Speaking on her own behalf and not for KPTV, she told WW that she heard
one warning, and only because she happened to be watching the commanding officer speak into the
microphone. Others were hard-pressed to hear it thanks to a poor-quality police loudspeaker, she said.

"They were telling us to move--and there was literally no place for us to go," she says. "There was a throng
of people behind us, and they were pushing us forward."

In 2000, after studying a clash between protesters and cops on May Day, Chief Mark Kroeker issued a
report saying that less-lethal weapons, such as pepper spray and rubber bullets, should not be used to
break up crowds. Thursday's tactics seemed to violate that policy.

Kroeker also formed a Rapid Response Team to employ state-of-the-art crowd-control training. One RRT
member, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WW that Thursday's use of pepper spray ran counter to
the unit's training. "I heard some guys saying, 'What is this bullshit?'" says the officer. "We had never
trained with that tactic."

Among those pepper-sprayed were several kids, including the 10-month-old and 3-year-old children of
protester Don Joughin.

Dr. Woodhall Stopford of Duke University, who has researched the hazards of pepper spray, told WW that
pepper spray has been linked to serious injury and death. He says the danger is theoretically greater to
children than to adults. "These sprays have never been evaluated for safety, period," says Stopford.

Because of its risks, red-pepper spray should not be used indiscriminately on a crowd unless officers are
in jeopardy, says Lt. Col. Ron Madrid, who teaches a class in less-lethal weaponry for the Marines at their
base in Quantico, Va. "It's not like you use it as a water cannon, hosing everybody down," he says.

Assistant Chief Clark defended the use of spray as a "highly effective tool." Asked about children
subjected to pepper spray, Clark told WW it was their parents' fault for bringing them to the rally.

Still another issue was the use of rubber bullets, which appeared to be fired into the crowd as it retreated
on Broadway near the Heathman. Clark, who initially denied the use of rubber bullets at that location, said
the bullets are only aimed below the waist and do not bounce once they hit the ground, instead skimming
along at street-level.

But, in reality, all rubber bullets bounce, and therefore could take out an eye if used in an "uncontrolled
manner," says Madrid.

Thursday's crowd was not blameless, but almost all the misbehavior occurred after the first mass-spraying.
Besides pushing one cop to the ground, scrawling graffiti and slashing the tires of an Oregon State Police
cruiser, protesters locked arms to block an entrance to the Heathman.

http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3109.lasso