Countywide : Campus Security Will Carry Pepper Spray

Campus police at Irvine Valley and Saddleback colleges will begin carrying pepper spray, joining the ranks of most Orange County college security forces.

“It’s regrettable that we need to have any defensive weapons, but the security officers at both colleges felt it was important,” said Harriett S. Walther, a trustee for the Saddleback Community College District.

UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton campuses are patrolled by state-employed, sworn police officers who carry guns and pepper spray. Chapman University officers also carry the cayenne pepper spray, intended to be a nonlethal way to subdue violent suspects.

Campus security officers at Orange Coast College were granted permission to carry the spray last month.

“It is an increasingly violent society,” said Jim Carnett, spokesman for Orange Coast College. “Our security officers were completely unarmed. We wanted them to have something.”

At Rancho Santiago College, campus police carry Mace. A security officer there said college officials rejected pepper spray as an unproven law enforcement tool.

The American Civil Liberties Union released a report last June questioning the safety of pepper spray. But a study released in August by the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police concluded the spray is safe and likely to prevent more serious injury to officers and citizens.

Concordia University in Irvine, a 1,500-student Lutheran college with 600 students who live on campus, is one of the few Orange County colleges where security officers are unarmed.

“I don’t know what the future will bring,” said Robert Barnes, vice president of administration. “Obviously, it’s one of those things you have to keep monitoring.”