Officials talk use of pepper spray in schools
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on November 26, 2017 3:05 AM
Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce and Goldsboro Police Chief Mike West were on hand at the Wayne County Board of Education's Monday work session, to discuss under what circumstances their school resource officers would use pepper spray to quell fights.
The men were invited to speak to the board after members of the community came forward at the board's Nov. 6 meeting to voice concerns over the use of pepper spray. Those concerns stemmed from a memo sent by the school system advising students to move away from fights in case pepper spray ever had to be deployed.
Pierce said the memo was a direct response to a series of fights at Eastern Wayne High School and Wayne Academy, in which students crowded around the incidents to watch and film with their phones rather than moving away. This, Pierce said, put both the students and the SROs tasked with containing the fight at risk.
"We needed to come up with some solution, some resolution to how we were going to handle these massive situations," he said. "We were having some places where the SROs were having to wade into a fight where there were numerous people fighting as well as numerous people surrounding the fight video taping with cell phones."
In the memo, the school system described how SROs from the sheriff's office will now blow a whistle three times before using pepper spray, to warn crowds of students to leave the area. It did not mention any kind of increase in how often SROs would deploy pepper spray, which is part of an officers use of force escalation.
West explained that escalation system, through which SROs can gradually increase the force they use as less forceful methods prove ineffective.
"The first step is a verbal warning, where we tell them to stop fighting, that kind of thing. If that doesn't work, then we go hands on, which is when we try to physically separate the people who are fighting. After that would be the OC spray," West said, using another term for pepper spray. "The next level after that would be a Taser, and if all of that didn't work we would then go to the firearm."
The term "OC spray" refers to oleoresin capsicum, a concentrated extract taken from peppers which is then further refined into capsacin, the active ingredient in pepper spray. The terms "OC spray" and "pepper spray" are functionally interchangeable.
Pierce reiterated that nothing about the memo represented a change in SRO policy, and officers were not going to start deploying pepper spray as a first resort. However, he said, students need to be aware that, when a large fight occurs, pepper spray is an option and they should move away in case it has to be used.
Board member Raymond Smith Jr. said that trained staff could also help prevent fights before they happen.
"If we have staff properly placed in these locations and we have staff on duty and properly trained to know what to look for, I know we can prevent a lot of these occurrences, and that is something that we as a board need to make sure we are responsive to," he said.