Assault on Pepper : Police: Increase in fatalities and growing popularity of the spray among officers and civilians raise concerns.

Maria Trejo called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department on April 23, looking for help. Her husband, she said, was high on cocaine and beer and was beating her.

When deputies arrived at their Stanton apartment and took Javier Sandoval Trejo into custody, the 43-year-old suspect started to go quietly but then suddenly became combative and agitated, according to a Sheriff’s Department report. As he struggled, deputies squirted him in the face with pepper spray, “to little or no effect,” the report said.

Within an hour, however, Javier Trejo was discovered comatose in his holding cell at the Orange County Jail. He was pronounced dead a short time later.

“I asked the police for help. I didn’t say kill him,” Maria Trejo said, weeping during a recent interview.

Javier Trejo’s death was one of more than 60 nationwide during the last five years that authorities say may be linked to a chemical agent designed as a non-lethal way to subdue violent suspects and embraced by a crime-weary public searching for personal protection.

But even as the popularity of pepper spray grows among police and civilians, concerns are being raised by academics, civil libertarians and some law enforcement officials about the possible lethal consequences of a relatively inexpensive weapon that is manufactured with little or no regulation.

“You have people who die after they have been sprayed,” said Steven Beazer, president of Utah-based Advanced Defense Technologies, one of about half a dozen major manufacturers of pepper spray devices. “Does pepper spray have a role in some of these deaths? I will say yes. It is going to have an effect. These are weapons. . . . Clearly, this is not a breath freshener or an underarm deodorant.”

According to a Times review of in-custody deaths since 1990, at least 61 fatalities nationwide--27 of them in California--have been reported after police used pepper spray on suspects. (Trejo’s death is still under investigation by the district attorney’s office.)

The Los Angeles Police Department reported that three men have died in custody after being sprayed with pepper gas since 1993. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported one such fatality since 1993.

Last week, the Los Angeles Police Commission approved participation in a nationwide, federally funded study on the use of pepper spray. The yearlong, $217,570 study conducted by the National Institute of Justice will compare the outcomes of use-of-force situations before and after police began using pepper spray.

Protests and calls for a federal investigation followed the most recent fatality, the June 4 death in San Francisco of burglary suspect Aaron Williams, 37, who was subdued with pepper spray while being arrested by police.

San Francisco Police Chief Tony Ribera acknowledged to reporters that his officers may have improperly used the spray, and urged further study of the substance. “I am concerned about what, if any, contribution [pepper spray] made to this man dying,” he said.

In a report to be issued today, the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said: “Increased use of pepper spray by law enforcement has raised serious concerns about whether police will use pepper spray to impose a painful chemical ‘street justice’ without resort to criminal charges or the courts.”

Medical and law enforcement experts agree that pinpointing the cause of deaths in pepper spray cases is complicated by the fact that the chemical agent is almost always used in conjunction with other police restraining methods--stun guns, handcuffs, manual holds and devices--and often involve physical struggles.

There is also agreement on other complicating aspects of deaths in police custody: Most of them grow out of domestic disputes, drug overdoses or psychotic episodes. Large-framed men weighing more than 250 pounds are at particular risk of succumbing after being sprayed, experts believe.

Autopsies generally indicate that the victims were under the influence of alcohol, methamphetamines, rock cocaine or PCP, making it difficult to pinpoint pepper spray as the primary cause of death. Others suffered from asthma, bronchitis or enlarged hearts, or “positional asphyxia,” a respiratory failure caused by being laid face-down while restrained.

Manufacturers defend their product, saying there is little or no scientific evidence linking pepper spray to any of the deaths. In only two of the 61 known cases have medical examiners cited pepper spray as a factor in the deaths, although medical experts admit that no tests have been developed to detect the spray.

“Look at the . . . coroners’ reports. They speak for themselves,” said Rick Wimberly, a spokesman for ZARC International, the Maryland-company that manufactures Cap-Stun, one of the brands used by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “Our product has been tested extensively, and despite best efforts, no threat to life has been found.”

Pepper spray advocates also note the benefits to law enforcement agencies since they began using the spray in the late 1980s. A report by the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police said that anecdotal studies of pepper spray effectiveness suggest that the use of the substance has reduced injuries suffered by suspects and officers, as well as excessive-force complaints against police departments.

Pepper spray is an oily plant resin made from such dried spices as chili or cayenne. In some products, the resin is mixed with mineral or vegetable oil, or water, and some form of alcohol carrier. It is injected into a canister, from which it can be dispensed in short bursts.

Pepper spray is now in the hands of thousands of police officers and an estimated 6.5 million civilians who use it with minimum training and scant knowledge of its potential health effects.

Since March, 1994, when it was approved for sale to civilians in California by Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, 126,266 people in the state have been certified to own and use pepper spray.

State and federal researchers have been tracking each fatality in an effort to determine what role, if any, pepper spray has played in the deaths.

“We are concerned that in each incident, untoward reaction to [pepper spray] may be the contributing cause of death, or exacerbated underlying conditions such as pre-existing disease or drug use to cause cardiac or respiratory failure,” Carol J. Henry, director of the California Environmental Protection Agency, wrote in an Aug. 26, 1993, memo to Lungren.

The following year, when Lungren approved civilian use of pepper spray, he did so over the objections of CAL/EPA, which had been monitoring deaths in police custody, according to agency documents.

Despite the growing debate, pepper spray has staunch advocates who support its use by police and civilians.

Lungren said he considered pepper spray “a tremendous success” in providing police officers with “an alternative to using firearms and lethal force.”

The attorney general said that in 13,000 incidents involving law enforcement officers, pepper spray was effective 86% of the time in subduing suspects, according to reports filed by local law enforcement agencies and compiled by the state Department of Justice.

Although his office monitors cases in which suspects die in custody after being sprayed, Lungren said, “I have to look at what the alternatives are.”

Since approving civilian use, Lungren has endorsed AB 830, sponsored by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame), which would eliminate all required training and certification requirements for the purchase of pepper spray. Now, civilians must pass a test, take a course or view an instructional video before buying the spray. Speier’s bill has passed in the Assembly and is pending in the Senate.

Medical experts and manufacturers say the effect of pepper spray on a subject cannot be predicted and that care must be used in its application.

So far in California, 27 people have died after being pepper-sprayed by police, according to the ACLU report.

From 1990 to 1993, 23 people elsewhere in the nation died after police pepper-sprayed them, according to a study by the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, funded by the U.S. Justice Department.

Since 1993, the National Institute of Justice’s National Law Enforcement Technology Center has identified seven more such deaths outside California and is investigating three others. A subsequent review by The Times found four more cases in the United States in 1994 and 1995 that federal researchers said they were not aware of.

The injury toll also is mounting.

From July 1, 1994, through this April, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission logged more than 150 emergency room incidents in which exposure to pepper spray was cited as the cause for treatment, many after the cans leaked in handbags or were accidentally set off.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is accusing the California Department of Justice of dragging its feet in monitoring and analyzing fatal incidents involving pepper spray, which is used by most law enforcement agencies in the state.

The ACLU report urges the agency to “develop emergency restrictions on pepper spray to minimize exposure of people who may be at increased risk--including drug users, asthmatics, the mentally ill and people with pre-existing heart or respiratory disease.”

The ACLU strongly opposes the Speier bill, which would allow civilians to buy pepper spray over the counter without being instructed on its use.

“We think it is a mistake to rush into legalized civilian use,” said Allan Parachini, an ACLU spokesman.

“It’s impossible to escape the fact that even experienced toxicologists are uncomfortable with the ease with which civilians can get access to pepper spray,” he said.

Speier, however, defends her bill.

“We have learned a great deal in one year” of civilian use of pepper spray, she said. “Bottom line, the attorney general and I would prefer that people push a button, not pull a trigger.”

Times librarian Sheila Kern contributed to this report.