01-12-2011, 08:24 AM
It's not unprecedented for an inventor to voice regrets when a creation turns out to have harmful uses. It is widely believed the Swedish industrialist, Alfred Nobel, created the Peace Prize bearing his name in response to feelings of guilt around his invention of dynamite and ballistite, both of which were used in violent acts during his lifetime. The famed physicist, Albert Einstein, was said to be greatly distressed for unintentionally advancing the development of the atomic bomb through his work. Today in the aftermath of the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide, there is a new name to add to the list, Kamran Loghman. In the 80's Loghman was the expert responsible with the FBI in developing weapons grade pepper spray. He also collaborated with police departments to develop guidelines for pepper spray's use. But now after seeing footage of police using pepper spray on non-violent Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide, including students at UC Davis, protesters with the Occupy movement in New York and 84 year old protester Dora Lee Rainey in Seattle, Kamran Loghman is speaking out against what he calls the most inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents he has ever seen. Loghman will join us in a minute, but first I want to play an excerpt from when the campus police officers at UC Davis pepper sprayed students earlier this month. The students were sitting down during a peaceful protest when officers began pepper spraying them at close range.
CROWD: [Shouting] The whole world is watching. [Shouting] Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.
PROTESTER: I want your name. I want his name. [Shouting]
AMY GOODMAN: UC Davis police pepper spraying students two weeks ago as they peacefully protested at UC Davis. We're joined now by Kamran Loghman who helped the FBI develop weapons grade pepper spray in the 80's and developed guidelines for police departments using the spray. He is joining us from Washington, DC. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Talk about your reaction to the use of the chemical agent that you helped the FBI develop.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Shocked and bewilderment. I mean, I saw it and the first thing that came to my mind wasn't police or students but my own children sitting down, having an opinion, and their being shot and forced by chemical agents.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you develop this in the 80's? How did you help develop pepper spray, Kamran Loghman?
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Pepper spray was available in those days as a dog repellant, but it did not have the strength to be a weapon grade product for law enforcement and military application, so it went through a series of research and development and a lot of field testing and by the time it became available, it went under three years of study at the FBI Firearms Training Unit in Virginia and became a standard issue with almost every police department in the United States. I was involved in all the research and development and basically development of the product.
AMY GOODMAN: So explain how it went from pepper spray to weapons grade pepper spray and then why the FBI was interested in developing this, and then how it came to be used by police departments all over the country.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, what you have is that in chili peppers or capsicum peppers or cayenne pepper, as you call it, is the family of capsicum pepper. You have an ingredient which is called capsaicinoids. Capsaicinoid is the active ingredient which actually causes inflammation of the mucous membranes, the eyelids, the nose, the respiratory system, anything that basically is moist in the human body and causes irritation and inflammation in that regard. So that part was manipulated, concentrated, strengthened so it was no longer something you see just in chili pepper but was fortified to many more degree. Then it was formulated under pressure in a canister in aerosol with a variety of chemicals which are not pepper spray such as alcohol or water, depending on the brand, different kinds of propellants or gasses in order to eject this spray. That's how the military specification would be applied making sure that it works every time you pull the trigger, let's call it. In regards to why FBI was interested in it, is because prior to that in the use of force by law enforcement, when you encounter somebody who is aggressive, let's say somebody was under the influence of narcotics or alcohol, and you arrest them and the highway patrol wants to take him out of the car and they become combatant. At that time police officers had really little choice, it was either baton or go to deadly force. By introduction of pepper spray, it was very quick and police officers were trained to do that. They could arrest the individual, take him back to the jail, wash their face, give them proper decontamination and that was the end of the story. In that regard, it was a great weapon. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the last 20 years.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you are seeing today, how it is being used, because you also work with police departments around the country in developing a protocol in how weapons grade pepper spray should be used, Kamran Loghman.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: One of the original training manuals that was developed for the FBI, as well as many federal law enforcement around the country, as well as the state agencies, was actually authored by me and several other people. In there we made it very specifically clear what the intention of use of pepper spray is and that is how every police officer gets trained, even today. That's how they get certified when they learn how to use the pepper spray. What occurred here is that in UC Davis you see a complete improper and inappropriate use. Normally pepper spray is used when there is a physical threat to the police officers or bystanders or there is a possibility of property damage and you see that things are going haywire. In that situation, police officers are justified to bring things under control by using a force that is not deadly, such as pepper spray. In the case of UC Davis, individuals are totally quiet. They are not saying anything and they are not harming anybody and they are not being aggressive to police officers. So the use was just absolutely out of ordinary and was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of. I personally certified 4000 police officers in the early 80's and 90's and I have never seen this before and that's why I was shocked. That's why I have come up and I feel it is my civic duty to explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.
AMY GOODMAN: Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer and professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin Madison told KPCC that the US military is banned by international law from using pepper spray on the battlefield. Kamran Loghman, is this true?
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: It is true, but it is not the complete picture. It is not just pepper spray. According to Geneva Convention, any use of chemical agent is not legal anywhere in the world by any country in the world at the time of war.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Egypt for a minute. The Egyptian military is reportedly in the process of purchasing 21 tons of tear gas from the Jamestown, PA, company called Combined Systems. Workers at the Suez seaport say an initial 7 ton shipment of the US made tear gas has already entered the port. Of course, we have seen and talked with people on the ground in Cairo about what many are saying is what can be lethal teargas, that people are choking or being asphyxiated by this. Talk about the difference and about tear gas being used in this way.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, pepper spray is, as I mentioned to you, the active ingredient that is derived from what is called oleoresin capsicum which is the oily resin of capsicum chili peppers. In a scientific way you extract that out of capsicum and it is from chili peppers where as tear gasses are manmade chemicals or synthetic and the one that you see being used in Egypt is called CS and it stands for a long term chemical which means autochlorobenzylmalononetrial. It has been in use since the 60's, tear gasses, and what it is supposed to do is cause tearing of the eye, that's why it's called tear gas, a lot of itching and when you inhale it, because it's in the air in a form of dust or cloud, and then you start the coughing and having shortness of breath. Tear gasses have what we call LD50. LD50 is the lethal dosage of 50% of population. How much chemical do you introduce into the air before 50% of the population can have fatality. It is becoming more and more fashionable this day and age to use chemical on people who have an opinion and that, to me, is a complete lack of leadership both in the police department and other people who cannot really deal with the root of the problem and they want to spray people to quiet them down and it is really not supposed to be that. It is not a thing that solves any problem, nor is it something that quiets people down. It is just a temporary tool in which it is justified to use in crowds when, as I mentioned to you, there is property damage and you want to quietly and quickly take care of that spot and not just the masses of people so that you can bring order and peace. It is not meant to take the mass of people, such as Egypt, and just tell them basically go home, shut up and don't say anything. That is not what tear gas is meant to be.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a clip of Fox News anchor, Megan Kelly, who made some controversial comments to Bill O'Reilly on Monday's edition of the O'Reilly Factor. The two Fox hosts were discussing the UC Davis police that pepper sprayed the protesters.
BILL O'REILLY: First of all pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?
MEGAN KELLY: Right, I mean its like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product essentially; but a lot of experts are looking at that and saying is that the real deal, has it been diluted, because …
BILL O'REILLY: Yeah, they should have more of a reaction than that..
MEGAN KELLY: Yeah, that's really beside the point. I mean, it was something that was obviously abrasive and intrusive and several went to the hospital.
BILL O'REILLY: Right, they just wanted them to get out of there, stop blocking what they were blocking and wanted to scatter them.
MEGAN KELLY: This was on the chancellor's orders. The chancellor ordered the police to go in and force these students to disburse.
BILL O'REILLY: That's Linda Catalli or Catay.
MEGAN KELLY: Yes, and it is a crime. They were charged. Ten of them were charged with unlawful assembly and failure to disperse because they were posing a sit-in, you know, a student protest and you can do that. That is very American, but it may also happen to break the law.
BILL O'REILLY: They wanted to get these people off the campus and they didn't want to lay hands on them so there's two ways to do this. You can do the pepper spray or, you know, you can physically drag them out of there.
MEGAN KELLY: They then did lay hands on them….
BILL O'REILLY: But you don't lay hands on someone..
MEGAN KELLY: No, but what I'm saying is the police would respond by saying, you pepper spray first to allow the hands-on part to be less confrontational because you are going to less resistance when you got somebody who just got pepper sprayed. Listen, I know the tape looks bad, I agree it looks bad. All I'm saying is that from a legal standpoint, I don't know that the cops did anything wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: Fox's Megan Kelly and Bill O'Reilly. Kamran Loghman, your response.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, first of all, in regards to pepper spray being a food ingredient. Aspirin also comes from bark of a tree so does wild yam is a natural herbal thing, but then again, what you derive from that becomes birth control pill. That doesn't mean the end product is still something that you can eat. It is true that it is being derived from capsicum and chili pepper, but by the time it is weaponized and becomes a weapon grade product, you can't eat it. I mean, it is impossible to eat the end product. So that's that. But in regards to the way the officer handled the situation, well it is obvious that many things went wrong. They did not use pepper spray justifiably according the use of force policy that they are trained for. They used a canister that was too large and was not meant for that kind of environment at such a close range. They did not properly decontaminate students where students were screaming and yelling for water, but what is really important is that we keep focusing on what happened at that moment. I really want to take that back because I go around the country and talk about leadership and I just finished one at US Naval Academy. I think the lack of leadership was very important because that is one of the things I train police officers. One of the most important things here was for someone to go back, bring the professor who has some affinity and wisdom to talk to the students and say listen, you made your point. Why don't we create a group? Why don't we go to an amphitheater? Let's do all of us help. Let the whole college help you guys so the world can all hear your voice. I don't think anybody was interacting with these people in the right way and they would just let them sit there and then treat them like insects. Let's go ahead and spray them as if you are watering plants.
AMY GOODMAN: Kamran Loghman, I want to thank you for being with us. He is the expert who helped develop weapons grade pepper spray with the FBI in the 1980's as well as helped develop guidelines for police departments around the country.
CROWD: [Shouting] The whole world is watching. [Shouting] Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.
PROTESTER: I want your name. I want his name. [Shouting]
AMY GOODMAN: UC Davis police pepper spraying students two weeks ago as they peacefully protested at UC Davis. We're joined now by Kamran Loghman who helped the FBI develop weapons grade pepper spray in the 80's and developed guidelines for police departments using the spray. He is joining us from Washington, DC. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Talk about your reaction to the use of the chemical agent that you helped the FBI develop.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Shocked and bewilderment. I mean, I saw it and the first thing that came to my mind wasn't police or students but my own children sitting down, having an opinion, and their being shot and forced by chemical agents.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you develop this in the 80's? How did you help develop pepper spray, Kamran Loghman?
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Pepper spray was available in those days as a dog repellant, but it did not have the strength to be a weapon grade product for law enforcement and military application, so it went through a series of research and development and a lot of field testing and by the time it became available, it went under three years of study at the FBI Firearms Training Unit in Virginia and became a standard issue with almost every police department in the United States. I was involved in all the research and development and basically development of the product.
AMY GOODMAN: So explain how it went from pepper spray to weapons grade pepper spray and then why the FBI was interested in developing this, and then how it came to be used by police departments all over the country.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, what you have is that in chili peppers or capsicum peppers or cayenne pepper, as you call it, is the family of capsicum pepper. You have an ingredient which is called capsaicinoids. Capsaicinoid is the active ingredient which actually causes inflammation of the mucous membranes, the eyelids, the nose, the respiratory system, anything that basically is moist in the human body and causes irritation and inflammation in that regard. So that part was manipulated, concentrated, strengthened so it was no longer something you see just in chili pepper but was fortified to many more degree. Then it was formulated under pressure in a canister in aerosol with a variety of chemicals which are not pepper spray such as alcohol or water, depending on the brand, different kinds of propellants or gasses in order to eject this spray. That's how the military specification would be applied making sure that it works every time you pull the trigger, let's call it. In regards to why FBI was interested in it, is because prior to that in the use of force by law enforcement, when you encounter somebody who is aggressive, let's say somebody was under the influence of narcotics or alcohol, and you arrest them and the highway patrol wants to take him out of the car and they become combatant. At that time police officers had really little choice, it was either baton or go to deadly force. By introduction of pepper spray, it was very quick and police officers were trained to do that. They could arrest the individual, take him back to the jail, wash their face, give them proper decontamination and that was the end of the story. In that regard, it was a great weapon. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the last 20 years.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you are seeing today, how it is being used, because you also work with police departments around the country in developing a protocol in how weapons grade pepper spray should be used, Kamran Loghman.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: One of the original training manuals that was developed for the FBI, as well as many federal law enforcement around the country, as well as the state agencies, was actually authored by me and several other people. In there we made it very specifically clear what the intention of use of pepper spray is and that is how every police officer gets trained, even today. That's how they get certified when they learn how to use the pepper spray. What occurred here is that in UC Davis you see a complete improper and inappropriate use. Normally pepper spray is used when there is a physical threat to the police officers or bystanders or there is a possibility of property damage and you see that things are going haywire. In that situation, police officers are justified to bring things under control by using a force that is not deadly, such as pepper spray. In the case of UC Davis, individuals are totally quiet. They are not saying anything and they are not harming anybody and they are not being aggressive to police officers. So the use was just absolutely out of ordinary and was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of. I personally certified 4000 police officers in the early 80's and 90's and I have never seen this before and that's why I was shocked. That's why I have come up and I feel it is my civic duty to explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.
AMY GOODMAN: Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer and professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin Madison told KPCC that the US military is banned by international law from using pepper spray on the battlefield. Kamran Loghman, is this true?
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: It is true, but it is not the complete picture. It is not just pepper spray. According to Geneva Convention, any use of chemical agent is not legal anywhere in the world by any country in the world at the time of war.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Egypt for a minute. The Egyptian military is reportedly in the process of purchasing 21 tons of tear gas from the Jamestown, PA, company called Combined Systems. Workers at the Suez seaport say an initial 7 ton shipment of the US made tear gas has already entered the port. Of course, we have seen and talked with people on the ground in Cairo about what many are saying is what can be lethal teargas, that people are choking or being asphyxiated by this. Talk about the difference and about tear gas being used in this way.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, pepper spray is, as I mentioned to you, the active ingredient that is derived from what is called oleoresin capsicum which is the oily resin of capsicum chili peppers. In a scientific way you extract that out of capsicum and it is from chili peppers where as tear gasses are manmade chemicals or synthetic and the one that you see being used in Egypt is called CS and it stands for a long term chemical which means autochlorobenzylmalononetrial. It has been in use since the 60's, tear gasses, and what it is supposed to do is cause tearing of the eye, that's why it's called tear gas, a lot of itching and when you inhale it, because it's in the air in a form of dust or cloud, and then you start the coughing and having shortness of breath. Tear gasses have what we call LD50. LD50 is the lethal dosage of 50% of population. How much chemical do you introduce into the air before 50% of the population can have fatality. It is becoming more and more fashionable this day and age to use chemical on people who have an opinion and that, to me, is a complete lack of leadership both in the police department and other people who cannot really deal with the root of the problem and they want to spray people to quiet them down and it is really not supposed to be that. It is not a thing that solves any problem, nor is it something that quiets people down. It is just a temporary tool in which it is justified to use in crowds when, as I mentioned to you, there is property damage and you want to quietly and quickly take care of that spot and not just the masses of people so that you can bring order and peace. It is not meant to take the mass of people, such as Egypt, and just tell them basically go home, shut up and don't say anything. That is not what tear gas is meant to be.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a clip of Fox News anchor, Megan Kelly, who made some controversial comments to Bill O'Reilly on Monday's edition of the O'Reilly Factor. The two Fox hosts were discussing the UC Davis police that pepper sprayed the protesters.
BILL O'REILLY: First of all pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?
MEGAN KELLY: Right, I mean its like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product essentially; but a lot of experts are looking at that and saying is that the real deal, has it been diluted, because …
BILL O'REILLY: Yeah, they should have more of a reaction than that..
MEGAN KELLY: Yeah, that's really beside the point. I mean, it was something that was obviously abrasive and intrusive and several went to the hospital.
BILL O'REILLY: Right, they just wanted them to get out of there, stop blocking what they were blocking and wanted to scatter them.
MEGAN KELLY: This was on the chancellor's orders. The chancellor ordered the police to go in and force these students to disburse.
BILL O'REILLY: That's Linda Catalli or Catay.
MEGAN KELLY: Yes, and it is a crime. They were charged. Ten of them were charged with unlawful assembly and failure to disperse because they were posing a sit-in, you know, a student protest and you can do that. That is very American, but it may also happen to break the law.
BILL O'REILLY: They wanted to get these people off the campus and they didn't want to lay hands on them so there's two ways to do this. You can do the pepper spray or, you know, you can physically drag them out of there.
MEGAN KELLY: They then did lay hands on them….
BILL O'REILLY: But you don't lay hands on someone..
MEGAN KELLY: No, but what I'm saying is the police would respond by saying, you pepper spray first to allow the hands-on part to be less confrontational because you are going to less resistance when you got somebody who just got pepper sprayed. Listen, I know the tape looks bad, I agree it looks bad. All I'm saying is that from a legal standpoint, I don't know that the cops did anything wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: Fox's Megan Kelly and Bill O'Reilly. Kamran Loghman, your response.
KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, first of all, in regards to pepper spray being a food ingredient. Aspirin also comes from bark of a tree so does wild yam is a natural herbal thing, but then again, what you derive from that becomes birth control pill. That doesn't mean the end product is still something that you can eat. It is true that it is being derived from capsicum and chili pepper, but by the time it is weaponized and becomes a weapon grade product, you can't eat it. I mean, it is impossible to eat the end product. So that's that. But in regards to the way the officer handled the situation, well it is obvious that many things went wrong. They did not use pepper spray justifiably according the use of force policy that they are trained for. They used a canister that was too large and was not meant for that kind of environment at such a close range. They did not properly decontaminate students where students were screaming and yelling for water, but what is really important is that we keep focusing on what happened at that moment. I really want to take that back because I go around the country and talk about leadership and I just finished one at US Naval Academy. I think the lack of leadership was very important because that is one of the things I train police officers. One of the most important things here was for someone to go back, bring the professor who has some affinity and wisdom to talk to the students and say listen, you made your point. Why don't we create a group? Why don't we go to an amphitheater? Let's do all of us help. Let the whole college help you guys so the world can all hear your voice. I don't think anybody was interacting with these people in the right way and they would just let them sit there and then treat them like insects. Let's go ahead and spray them as if you are watering plants.
AMY GOODMAN: Kamran Loghman, I want to thank you for being with us. He is the expert who helped develop weapons grade pepper spray with the FBI in the 1980's as well as helped develop guidelines for police departments around the country.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass