8/10/97
Pepper spray is not the villain 
  
Luis McIntire died in police custody, while restrained and after being sprayed with pepper spray. 
     However rare that combination of circumstances may be, it happened in Boulder early Sunday (Aug. 2) and it is bound to lead to calls for changes in police procedure. 
     McIntire was in custody because a woman attending the same all-night ``rave'' party had reported him to security. He seemed very intoxicated, she said, and he had grabbed her breast. 
     That behavior on the part of a total stranger warrants a complaint, surely, and the woman has no reason to feel guilty about what happened later. Yet her reaction, ``He didn't deserve to die,`` is understandable. It's not as if he was interrupted robbing a convenience store at gunpoint. 
     But people should be cautious about allowing their emotional reaction to the specifics of this case to influence their judgment about general policies. Police use of restraints, or of chemical agents like pepper spray, is an alternative to even more dangerous methods _ chokeholds and bullets, for instance. 
     Pepper spray is very disagreeable stuff. Its active ingredient, oleoresin capsicum, is a highly concentrated form of the chemical that makes cayenne papper hot, and the effects, as described by the National Institute of Justice, include ``involuntary eye closure, . . . constricted airway, and temporary do is hear the Velcro and they comply pretty quickly.'' 
     The same study suggested that the use of the spray reduced the number of injuries _ to officers and suspects both _ and the number of complaints about police brutality. 
     Pepper spray, by itself, is unlikely to kill anyone. The reason it figures in a number of deaths in custody is because of all the other things likely to be happening at the same time it's used _ particularly when the spray, by itself, hasn't been effective. 
     That's one of the indications that a suspect is at risk, according to Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan, Jr., a member of the ``Less Than Lethal'' panel of the Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Council of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
     The others: 
     (bu) bizarre or violent activity 
     (bu) drug or alcohol involvement 
     (bu) obesity _ especially ``big bellies'' 
     This odd-sounding collection goes together because all of them can contribute to ``positional asphyxia'' if a suspect who has his hands and feet tied together behind his back lies prone, on his stomach. To breathe, he has to lift the weight of his body. If his breathing is already hampered by the spray, he's out of breath from fighting with police and his respiration is depressed by alcohol he is at risk. 
     Sullivan suggests that police avoid prone restraint techniques, and if they have to be used ``subjects should be closely and continuously monitored,'' and that's a change the police department might consider. 
     But it's hardly fair to put all the blame on the pepper spray.