On This One, the Jury Is In

A federal court will be asked to decide whether the civil rights of sit-in demonstrators were violated when law enforcement officers in Humboldt County methodically swabbed their eyes with liquid pepper spray after they refused an order to disperse. In the court of public opinion the verdict should already be clear.

To deliberately apply a highly irritating substance to protesters’ eyes in a situation where officers faced no serious physical threat is an unwarranted and clearly impermissible use of force. Legal coercion must be proportionate to the threat involved. The provocation in this case--the refusal of demonstrators in two incidents to leave the lobby of an office building and the local office of a congressman--in no way sanctioned a use of force that was all but indistinguishable from torture.

An hour and a half of videotape documents the abusive use of force that took place. In one incident last Sept. 15, seven demonstrators who staged a sit-in in the lobby of the Pacific Lumber Co.’s headquarters in Scotia refused a police order to disband. Liquid pepper spray was then rubbed into the eyes of four. In a second incident three women who occupied the Eureka office of Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor) were similarly punished when they refused to leave. The demonstrators were opposing plans for logging redwoods in the Headwaters Forest.

The liquid form of pepper spray is a new weapon in the arsenal of law enforcement. Apparently legal precedents regarding when or even if it can be properly used have not been set. But the nature of this weapon, and the serious and perhaps permanent damage it can do, certainly should rule out its use in the two instances, which have given rise to a federal criminal probe as well as the civil rights suit. A jury viewing the videotape ought to have no problem coming to that conclusion.