Angry in the Great White North

First there was a fight between Toronto police the Chilean soccer team:

The Thursday incident began as Chilean players were about to greet fans after their 3-0 loss to Argentina in a semifinal match at BMO Field.

Police prevented the players from reaching a large fence that separated them from hundreds of angry, chanting fans. There was pushing and shoving, and a Chilean official said police used pepper spray and a Taser to subdue the players and some other members of the country's soccer delegation.

And then there was Florida police officers stunning Marlins pitcher Scott Olsen with a Taser:

Police Lt. Michael Bentolila said Olsen was arrested in the Miami suburb of Aventura, where an officer clocked him driving 48 mph in a 35 mph zone and attempted to pull him over at about 3:40 a.m. The officer used the police car's lights, siren and public address system to get Olsen to pull over in his Infiniti sports utility vehicle, but he did not stop, Bentolila said.

Olsen then got out of his car and sat down on a plastic chair in front of his home, Bentolila said. When backup officers arrived and tried to arrest him, Olsen resisted by kicking at the officers, who then stunned him with the Taser, Bentolila said.

Let's not forget the pepper spraying of a baby by the RCMP, one of 14 people sprayed, including six children, in British Columbia:

Shannon Phillips sat cradling her six-month-old stepson this afternoon, still shocked a member of the local RCMP had sprayed her and her baby in the face with pepper spray.

Aside from calming the coughing and breathing difficulties, doctors at St. Mary's Hospital in Sechelt had to freeze young Kayden Mayers' eyeballs to check for serious damage, she said.

"He was screeching," said Phillips, 37. "It got right on his scalp, he had streaks of red marks. "You're supposed to be able to rely on your RCMP. How can you do that when this kind of stuff happens?"

A RCMP spokesperson apologized for spraying the children, but said the officers had to act in self-defense to stop the angry crowd.

The incident began when one officer saw 10 young people carousing in the back of Mayers' black pickup, the lead vehicle in the procession, and attempted to stop the truck and give him a warning.

In these cases, I'm not suggesting the police did anything wrong (though the apology in the case of the incident in British Columbia suggests otherwise). Investigations will make that determination. But I wonder if the use of Tasers and pepper spray and other non-lethal means is actually increasing the level of violence.

In times past, a police officer had a choice if thinking of physically intervening -- use his gun or his baton. The lethality of the gun made it the choice of last resort. But the only other choice was to pull out the baton and wade into a melee. Not a great option either. There would still be potential for serious injury, in particular suffered by the officer. The tendency then was then to talk.

Now officers have Tasers and chemical sprays and trained dogs -- all means of affecting physical force that are supposed to fall short of lethal.

Does that means police are depending more on these methods and less on negotiation and attrition to convince suspects to surrender?

These are anecdotes, but this report on the use of police dogs makes explicit reference to trying to discourage their use:

The RCMP public complaints commission is recommending the Mounties' attack dogs be classified as "impact weapons" after one of the animals ripped apart a suspect's leg earlier this year.

The designation should curb the use of attack dogs on suspects who are merely unco-operative or resistant as opposed to armed, threatening or aggressive, the commission said in its annual report to Parliament released yesterday.

So if a suspect is uncooperative, the police are not to release the hounds. Since a gun is also out of the question, the police might be forced into using gentle persuasion.

Will a decision like this have the desired effect? Perhaps. But remember that a mistake in employing non-lethal means will result in a hospital visit for the victim and an apology from the police department. A mistake with a gun has far more serious repercussions consistent with the severity of the mistake. So even if police are told to use far more discretion in using non-lethal means, in the field some cops might decide to pull out the Taser anyway, even in a low-intensity situation that runs counter to the guidelines. He knows he might be called to account for it, but since the likely outcome is an arrest and a suspect with a headache, the negative results for the cop will also be minor. Contravening guidelines in the use of a firearm are going to have consequences for the officer that are serious and career-ending, potentially even resulting in criminal charges.

But it's not just the police. Suspects too might be more aggressive in an environment where aggression is met with non-lethal weapons. Of course, no one wants to get a face full of pepper spray, but a suspect whose judgement is impaired to begin with, facing a police offer brandishing a small tube and with his sidearm holstered, might not be sufficiently cowed by what he sees to give up peacefully.

The point is that before there was stark choice for both police and criminals -- give up peacefully or someone is going to get killed. Now with the gradation of violence available, in particular on the part of police, means that police can avoid resorting to talking.

I doubt we can do much about this. The alternative -- take away Tasers and pepper spray and such -- in order to make an encounter with police more lethal by default, seems just wrong. Of course, so does the indiscriminate use of pepper spray.