In a similar vein: it's worth noting that pepper spray, mace, and other "nonlethal" chemical weapons are actually relatively lethal[1]. It's hard to estimate exactly how many people die after being pepper sprayed each year, in part because the police exert force to get deaths in custody recategorized into pre-existing medical conditions, drug overdoses, etc.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-06-18-mn-14572-...

Yup, wanted to actually add a parentheses talking about this but I'd have ended up on a long tangent. We were also taught to whenever possible provide medical help and we had a big focus on allergies.

Don't forget the TASER, so nonlethal the company renamed themselves Axon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon_Enterprise

That’s all fine but I think what we really need is to hold officers liable for not following the rules. With the advent of body cams this is just barely beginning to happen in the USA, but they still have incredible leeway. Officers should be required to carry liability insurance and if they break the rules their insurance pays the victims and their insurance goes up. It will quickly become too expensive for bad cops to keep working, and switching departments won’t save them.

Let's skip the focus on individual civil liability and insurance, and go all the way. Cops acting outside of official orders should be held criminally liable for their actions. A cop who beats their spouse can't claim that it's just part of their job, and neither should a cop or group of cops who pepper spray a crowd for sadistic fun.

Furthermore, we need to attack the root of the problem - this concept of sovereign immunity - and introduce civil liability for the damage caused by policing even when it's in line with reasonable policies. If a person gets arrested and later is acquitted or the charges dropped, they should be compensated for all the damages suffered as a result of the arrest and prosecution, regardless of the merits of the government's actions. Right now these externalities are funded by a perverse reverse lottery where we just expect the unlucky to bear them, which has caused them to grow without bound.

Fully agree and well said thank you.

Leading your reply with "that's all fine" effectively dismisses OPs point on their post to point at your argument instead—I don't sense this is your intent, but this is totally a situation where doing both would be completely valid.

Officers being pepper sprayed may lead them to use less pepper spray, and also may lead to less incidents where officers should need to be held liable.

This is true only if cops can be expected to have empathy for the people they would be pepper spraying, and I honestly think that’s overly optimistic.

I’m all for pepper spraying the cops, but I wouldn’t want to suggest that is a good solution to this problem.

Part of the problem seems to be that cops believe their victims deserve to be punished. They must know the people they tackle and kneel on and beat up are experiencing pain but as we have seen that doesn’t dissuade quite a lot of them from behaving badly. This is why I think that expecting empathy is actually misguided and consequences are better.

This is a good idea. It's similar to how I need insurance as a contractor, because I can cause literally millions of euros of damage. Well police can cause more than just monetary damage.

It's incredibly sad that this is necessary in the U.S.A. though, and perhaps it's only a symptom of the actual problem(s). The overwhelming majority of police are friendly and helpful in the places in Europe I've been (and I'm not white!).

EDIT: Heh, just looked up Belo Horizonte. I should have said "Americas" then ;)

I think there is a second part to this conversation that may vary by culture. The author walked away from the exercise trying to empathize with future recipients. You could also walk away with the mentality of I survived this, so others should too, and you’re weak if you can’t.

I did consider that this mentality might be an outcome of the exercise too. I think that's partly inevitable and some will always fall on the other side but in some ways the mentality was also guided by the constant underlying principles being taught throughout the training.

So it works best in combination with culture and protocols that support the empathy line.

So maybe the title should be Pepper Spray Your Officers and Make Them to Consider the Suffering of Others. Empathy is the real key here, and valuing it.

They won't empathize though... or rather they will empathize, cruely. They will see the suffering they have created, know what they created, and still laugh about it back in the locker room.

Exactly. We got gassed in army basic training for this very reason. No empathy involved, it just lets the know that it won’t kill you.

We got gassed too, and indeed that was the reasoning on that exercise. I think it's a matter of the surrounding principles and teaching. With riot control weapons, it might have both effects.

Can't generalize my mentality and expect all to think the same way, but I'd be _more_ comfortable spraying in a situation that looks messy knowing that it likely won't kill, but I'm certainly _less_ comfortable literally spraying into the air because it saves time.

This is an important point. Furthermore, it might just make an officer anxious to use it on somebody else so they can be on the delivering end rather than the receiving end.

Where I am, all officers are subject to their own implements during training to reduce the surprise/shock when inevitably someone crossfires you with mace or a taser.

Lol does that happen often? I can understand it with mace, but a taser?? What happens when a senior officer gets tased by some rookie? I imagine he would never hear the end of that.

Feds in Portland were effectively tear gassing themselves at the courthouse for two solid months, and the only thing they changed about their usage over that time was to deploy so much more that they were firing and throwing expired munitions that didn't explode and instead got lodged in storm drains and school playgrounds.

The empathy has to be there already before the exposure. It won't just spontaneously show up after.

Hey there! Also from Belo Horizonte.

The polícia militar here is pretty tough. We can argue that compared to Rio's PM they are nice, but cases like this serve as a reality check.

I can't help but feel like there is something to do with the military aspect of the corporation. Do you think that demilitarisation of the Police would help with this kind of lack of empathy?

I'll refrain from commenting on what I think potential solutions might be since I haven't given the topic much thought and am not super aware of all the nuance involved.

I do think though that in general in Brazil we tend to double down on approaches when we don't get results when we should _consider_ taking steps back. Education is bad? More hours, more homework! (something to learn from Finland there as well) A lot of crime? More power to the police! Maybe easing things up might lead to more benefits in the long-term.

I have strong thoughts on the education front, but less so regarding the police. I see both sides - on one hand, a good chunk of the population only gets exposed to the police in situations where they're coming in rough (a friend once said "the police only goes up the hills to shoot"). On the other hand, it's rough being a police officer here, and your life can often be at risk. So unsure what the solution is, just glad to spark the debate!

The key piece here is that the trainees in the humane system were forced to walk for water; that's the part that's specifically rooted it what it means to be a member of the public in a crowd; it's empathetic. Although it's not uncommon for police in the US to be pepper sprayed and tased during training, in a toxic culture that easily becomes "I've been through it, you'll get over it."

It becomes difficult to defend police forces when entire police forces are okay with this type of behavior.

It means the officers are not thinking for themselves, and that this type of thing is (can be) policy in some locations, which is not okay by me. I don't want to pay guys to do this.

the solution here is simple: a police officer in your face means that if you disobey them in any way, you could be insta killed with their insta kill buttons. this means that they hold an incredibly dangerous job that you should not allowed to participate in if you're irrational or a self interested coward. any cop or higher up who does this shit should be instafired. a cop who kills someone without a credible threat should be hung (or at least jailed for a VERY long time, remember, these same people would jail you for a hundred years for dealing weed just a few years ago and now they say it's fine). a cop who suffocates someone to death because he wants to look cool should also be hung. the only reason you disagree with such basic order is because you don't actually want order but you are in an us vs them war between cops and so called anti cops. let's face it, a large amount of police, probably 50% or more, are belligerent tough power tripping types, and newspaper consuming cowards that make up 99% of the west allow them to continue to be this way. i am not anti police, but we do have about 100x more policing than we need, and we're forced to pay insane amounts of tax for it too

If they had a permit to be there and there was no conflict needing to be shut down the whole ordeal described sounds like pretty awful police misconduct.

I don't know if there's any recourse in Brazil, but in America, at least it sounds like you'd have a case.

The problem here isn't the pepper spray. The problem with the people were physically attacked while being within the law.

If someone attack me, for no apparent reason, acting in NON-regular ways even if APPARENTLY from the uniform seems to be an officer I have to defend myself, self defense it's clear.

SO perhaps it's just a matter of attitude to be Citizens vs crooks. In the described situation I'll do my best to avoid the spray, document, call the public denouncing an ongoing assault and once managed something like that act directly as needed against the assaulter who MIGHT seems officers BUT since they act not like an officer should they are now simply aggressors. This of course include as possible non lethal and lethal force as well, of course without much extra hesitation.

Why does the author assume that the officers had not been pepper sprayed themselves?

The choices are either they did and knowing this they still abused the pepper spray, or they weren't sprayed themselves and didn't realize it's a more serious weapon than they might think.

I think OP, out of trust in the human nature, went with the latter.

I don't understand the apologetic tone of this post. At least where I live this behaviour is illegal. These cops must lose their jobs and go to jail. Their job is to protect people, not injure them. F*k*g b*t**s.

Just like to point out that how police should handle group unrest should be different from how police handle 1v1 interactions.

Groups of people are EXTREMELY dangerous. There has been plenty of studies done that show that as a collective, people are willing to go much further in behavior extremes than on an individual level. Groups of people can and will kill individuals without second thought, even in non violent settings (Travis Scott concert is a good example)

Personally, Id rather Police use non lethal liberally instead of getting itchy trigger fingers when faced with a large crowd.

Way to setup false choice.

I would rather they use letal weapons on crowd than nuking the city.

If it happened like described I see no reason to proceed to spray without warnings. In fact why would you even clear streets if it's an organized event and most people already left due to rain.

In the UK riot police get pepper sprayed during their training from what I’ve heard. Likewise for Taser officers.

From what I read, it’s the same in the US.

Eh I don't like this generalization. I live in Europe it's a national news in my country if the police is using their weapon for a warning shot let alone actually shooting someone.

Officers should understand that they're casting crucio, not expelliarmus