‘Respect it’: Sinclair police cadets, DDN reporter get taste of pepper spray

The instructor opened a fresh can. And instead of a clean line of OC spray across the forehead, I felt a smattering of droplet across my face.

Aside from a few dry coughs, I didn’t feel anything to start. As I ran the gantlet, we all began to wonder if I was part of the small percentage of the population that is unfazed by pepper spray.

Once we started washing off the stuff, we discovered that I am not.

OC spray happens to be water activated.

OC stands for Oleoresin Capsicum, and the major ingredient is cayenne pepper, 10,000 times the strength of what you use to make dinner.

Most police departments require that officers be subject to OC spray, and TASERs before carrying those tools. If not done in the academy, that training will be done by their individual departments.

Cadets are also taught when to use it on others.

Whether or not use of OC spray is reasonable depends a lot on the scenario: if a crime has been committed, what crime, what the officer needs the subject to do and how quickly, etc.

For example, passive resistance (sitting in place during a protest) absolutely does not warrant the use of pepper spray, whereas active resistance, which ranges from pulling away and fleeing to outright fighting, may warrant the use of OC spray.

With any use of force, officers must be able to articulate why they felt the use of force was necessary in the ensuing report.

“If this academy is making you take a taste of this, they want you to respect it,” Instructor Wayne Dumolt said during the classroom portion.

“You’re putting someone in pain. Be reasonable about it,” he said.

First hand experience

On a chilly, grey Saturday morning cadets in the current Sinclair Police Academy class gathered in the parking lot next to Building 19.

The few cadets who were able to opt out of being pepper sprayed —some for medical reasons, others because they had previously been trained in it — brought sympathy donuts.

The others cadets and this reporter lined up. We each received a line of OC spray across the forehead. Immediately after, each did 10 pushups, then ran a series of obstacles, throwing elbows, knees and shoves at giant pads.

Then we had to unlock a pair of handcuffs before getting rinsed off.

Then comes the long process of trying to get rid of the stuff, alternating between being sprayed in the face with a garden hose and patting your face down with paper towels full of dish soap.

What does it feel like?

It feels like getting a sunburn, and then standing in front of an open oven, if the oven was on the inside of your eyeballs and set at 450 degrees.

If all you have is a hose and dish soap, and not EMT-grade OC neutralizing agent, the best thing to do, we were taught, was to stick the end of the hose in the middle of your forehead and flush the OC out of one eye and then the other. That way, you’re not re-contaminating your eyes on one side.

The instinct is to keep your eyes closed, as it mitigates the pain in the short term. But in order to get the OC out, the opposite is true. Opening my eyes felt like needles were being driven into them, but the fresh air prompting my eyes to form tears was the best thing in order to be able to see again.

Once the hose, dish soap, and air restored my ability to see, we each went and crouched in front of a fan for as long as it took to return to normal, or as normal as it was going to get for the rest of the day.

For the next hour, a stream of police academy cadets cycled through the course and dunked their faces in the hose, screaming and occasionally embellishing with colorful phrases that we can’t publish in the newspaper.

OC spray tends to affect people differently. Some people, like myself, were walking around back to normal after about 15 minutes, feeling vaguely guilty over our relative good fortune. Others who were still feeling the heat for two hours after.

After about an hour, a few cadets discovered that the alley behind the building is functionally a one-way wind tunnel, and we all began jogging up and down the alley to get as much wind on our burned faces as physically possible.

Academy discontinuing practice

After this academy, Sinclair plans to discontinue the use of pepper spray in training.

This is partly because not all local police departments (such as Kettering) carry it, but also because two cadets had to go to the hospital: one for a previously undiscovered allergy to pepper spray, and another for a separate medical issue. Both recovered.

Future cadets would be trained — and possibly subjected to it — by their departments before carrying it on the street.

Pepper spray may also be supplanted in the future by pepper “gel.” Pepper gel sticks to the target, and while less likely to get into the target’s eyes, it’s also less likely to blow back on the officer or spread to other people in the area.

Ultimately, pepper spray is a tool to gain compliance, instructors say. If an officer deploys OC spray, cadets are instructed to follow up with giving commands (stop resisting, get on the ground, etc.) physically detain the person, decontaminate them (the jail probably won’t do it for you) and get them medical attention if necessary.