Thread:Comments:California campus pepper spray police suspended/This doesn't make any sense


 * Charles J. Kelly, who used to work as a lieutenant for Baltimore Police Department, defended the actions of the police officers as-seen in the video, calling it to be "fairly standard police procedure". Kelly explained that the use of pepper spray is preferable to physical force in such situations – as-opposed to attempting to lift up protesters. "When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," explained Kelly. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

I would like to see evidence showing it is "standard police procedure" to pepper-spray unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. It isn't and it never has been. Further, the claim that pepper spray is preferable to lifting up the protesters makes no sense at all and should win an award for the most dubious, absurd statement of the year. As the video clearly shows, not only did the officer pepper-spray the demonstrators, he then followed this up by dragging them away on the pavement and arresting them. These students were in need of medical attention and were injured by the pepper-spray. The police literature shows that in the United States during the 1990s alone, "70 fatalities linked to pepper-spray use" were cited by the U.S. Department of Justice. To the best of my knowledge, there have been zero  deaths due to "picking up human bodies". Kelly's argument doesn't hold water, and the writer who put this report together didn't do their homework.