Say what you want about Occupy Albany. I want to talk about pepper spray.

I have my issues with the sentiment and tone behind the Occupy movement, the vagueness of some of its goals, and the propensity for melodrama and grandstanding. They’re pretty well documented.

An APD mounted officer arms a can of pepper spray during the Occupy Albany eviction on Thursday, December 21st.

In recent weeks, I’ve become more and more disatisfied, disenfranchised, and cynical towards the movement. Part of it is because I’m exhausted by the rhetoric, the overstatement of its sentiment by drawing comparison to Middle Eastern protestors literally fighting for their lives in the streets and the Civil Rights movement, and the construction of elaborate scenarios where every single politician and officer is part of some secret cabal or conspiracy which misdiagnoses the ailments in our system and is self-defeating. But much of it, too, is due to supporters of the movement who hold steadfast to the movement’s claim that it is a collection of varying and differing ideologies, viewpoints, and world views. Yet if you express any hesitation about claiming solidarity with them, you are roundly chastised. And if you do what I am wont to do, which is make jokes about them, forget about it.

Still, with all my apprehension, I don’t think it’s right they should be pepper sprayed.

You can read a full recap of today’s eviction of Occupy Albany from Academy Park over at All Over Albany, complete with photos and videos. What I want to talk about, though, is the use of pepper spray by law enforcement.

The issue I have is that I feel that things like tazers and pepper spray, by their nature, should be used as a last resort; tazers because of the danger it poses to cardiac health and pepper spray because in a crowd it harms not just single targets but bystanders. In both cases, there seem to be more and more instances where the use of it is unwarranted, unnecessary, and/or excessive.

There are conflicting reports over what happened with the mounted Albany Police Officer who used the pepper spray. Videos of the incident are, while prevalent, inconclusive. But while the benefit of hindsight can provide excuses for the use of pepper spray, it does not excuse what I feel is knee-jerk use by police in not just Albany but throughout the country. This instance was not as excessive as what happened at UC Davis last month, yet still I look at these videos and don’t see any point where I feel it was necessary to resort to it.

In infamous pepper spraying incident at UC Davis started a conversation that should be continued about its use by officers, both public and private.

When raising the concern on Twitter, I was asked what non-violent means of protection could be afforded officers. One person, even while the rest of the conversation remained civil, drew the comparison of Kent State and asked if that would be preferable. But that’s a false dilemma. Police for decades were able to engage in crowd control and other situations such as what occurred in Academy Park without the use of things like pepper spray and tazers. This is, really, a more recent phenomenon.

The other suggestion was that it’s preferable to the use of a baton. Yet while that sounds more brutal, I disagree that it’s inherently worse. The benefit of the baton is that not only is it something that can only be used on a single person (unlike pepper spray) and does not carry the more immediate dangers of tazers, but it makes the wielder more discriminating in its use for the very reason pepper spray was adopted: because of the liability it carries.

Obviously, in the days to come, we’ll get more of the story. Or maybe we won’t. I’m sure, either way, I’ll continue to come under fire from my fellow Lefty friends for not supporting the Occupy movement enough (as if support at all is a requirement – how very Soviet) and my friends I politely disagree with on the Right end of the spectrum for the sympathy I carry towards those who were sprayed. But I’m trying to find any justification for continuing to allow police to use things like pepper spray in a situation involving protest and crowd control and, to be frank, I think until we can get to a point where officers are competent enough with it to only to use it as a last resort, they shouldn’t be allowed to have it on their persons.