In Tranquil Leisure Village, Alarm Over Pepper Spray

As the largest retirement community in Ventura County, Leisure Village takes pride in offering its 3,600 residents the easy life. There are lots of options, such as golf, dancing and shuffleboard.

But now some disgruntled senior citizens are taking issue with a new option that has only recently caught their attention: getting pepper-sprayed and led off in handcuffs, as if their behavior is construed as life-threatening.

Aware that pepper spray is already a controversial substance in the larger society when used on far younger and more resilient targets, some residents say that they have trouble believing anybody could have approved its possible use in a community set aside for the elderly.

Nobody has yet been sprayed, but that hasn’t kept the uproar from building on the village’s golf course and tennis courts and its broad, quiet, tree-lined streets.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Richard Levin , 72, who is quick to point out that he could not have overpowered the community’s security guards even when he was much younger.

“There isn’t a one of them who can’t handle a 70- or an 80- or a 90-year-old without resorting to pepper spray and handcuffs,” he said. “What if they decided there was some reason to spray my wife? She’s got Addison’s disease, diabetes, congestive heart disease, three spinal fusions. . . . If they sprayed her, she’d never come out of it.”

The brouhaha started after the community’s board of directors approved a policy in September allowing guards to use the stinging spray not just on intruders, but on menacing residents.

The private Leisure Village security force, which had carried no weapons, first asked the board’s blessing on pepper spray in 1992. Its case was evidently strengthened when a resident threatened a guard with a knife during a domestic dispute two years ago.

Although the policy changed three months ago, it became widely known to residents only in the last month.

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Leisure Village general manager Jim Gembala said the panel “responded to a request by the security department.”

“They have had verbal confrontations with people, but not very often anything other than that,” Gembala said. “This was merely what we felt was the most nonlethal or innocent means of protection they could have.”

Max Moses, the village’s chief of security, refused to comment. But he unveiled the policy in last month’s issue of the Village Voice, the community’s newsletter.

“As chief of security, I would like to ensure each and every resident that this less than lethal tool has been added to enhance the security and safety of all residents, invited guests and our employees,” Moses wrote.

He explained that guards spraying an elderly person must apply handcuffs and then “call for emergency care, follow all decontamination procedures, and administer oxygen.”

He also outlined the three grim circumstances that all must occur to justify spraying an elderly person:

* The subject is an immediate threat to your life, or the life of another.

* The subject has the ability and means to carry out the life threat.

* The person being threatened has no means of escape.

But opponents say that they can’t imagine such conditions coming up very often in such a quiet place. Leisure Village does not harbor the same kind of ferment as, say, Eureka, where police officers recently dabbed pepper spray on the eyes of nine people protesting the destruction of ancient redwoods. Here, the most heated conflicts revolve over questions like which cable TV system is best.

“Sure, you’re dealing with elderly people and some of them do tend to get a little crotchety,” said Bill Kidder, a 66-year-old retired Pacific Bell employee fresh off the golf course. “They think they own the village. If they get stopped for speeding, they might tell the guard: ‘You have no right! I pay my monthly fees! I pay your salary!’ But if a security guard can’t cope with that, he should find another line of work.”

Kidder is among a group that started circulating petitions this week protesting the new policy. They plan to present them to the board at a Jan. 5 meeting.

They are not the only ones questioning the village’s security practices.

At Orange County’s Leisure World, the world’s largest retirement community, Sgt. Mike Johnson expressed astonishment.

“We would never arm our security personnel with handcuffs or pepper spray--especially pepper spray,” he said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be the law firm representing [Leisure Village].”

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Full-time security personnel in the 20,000-resident Laguna Hills community are retired law enforcement officers who carry guns. Part-timers carry no weapons.

“A security officer’s position is to observe and report,” Johnson said. “You’re not a cop when you’re a security guard--you call the cops.”

Pepper spray is used by many police departments to immobilize suspects, but critics contend that it can kill. A review by The Times found 61 deaths among people sprayed by police officers nationwide from 1990 to 1995.

On the elderly, it can pose a particular risk, according to some medical experts.

“They can’t tolerate insults to their system as well as a younger person,” said Dr. Valerie Moussou, a physician at the Ventura County Medical Center. “It would cause a severe shortness of breath in an elderly person, tightness in the chest and possible chest pain. If it caused a respiratory problem, it could also cause a heart attack. The heart rate would go up because you’re fighting for air.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also sounded a cautionary note about the Leisure Village policy.

“The seniors there really ought to be concerned,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, associate director of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU.

“With an older population, you would have more medical conditions, such as heart, asthma and other respiratory diseases, where the effects of pepper spray would be compounded,” she said.

Besides fearing the health effects of pepper spray, some residents are angry that the policy was made without consulting a residents’ security committee.

Herb Marks, 87, headed the committee when the proposal first came up five years ago. The committee strongly recommended against it.

“I don’t think it’s in keeping with the feeling of the village,” Marks said.

Local police have not viewed Leisure Village as an especially violent place.

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Over the last 12 months, sheriff’s deputies have answered 191 calls at the village, but about 50 were simply to check on the well-being of residents.

There were also 20 calls about theft by intruders and 18 to request the presence of an officer. The rest ranged from traffic accidents to domestic disturbances.

“I’m unaware of any situation where we’ve used pepper spray,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Craig Husband.

Still, Husband said he can see both sides of the argument.

“I understand why the residents wouldn’t want it, but from the security guards’ standpoint--in terms of if someone came in from the outside and was attempting to commit a crime--it would be nice to have those tools,” he said. “But I’m unaware of any situation where you would have to use it on the residents.”

So is Richard Levin.

“What if [a resident does] yell or wave his arms around?” he asked. “What in the devil can he do to one of those strapping young guards?”