FBI Investigating Use of Pepper Spray

SAN FRANCISCO —  The federal government opened a criminal investigation Friday into the use of liquid pepper spray in the eyes of demonstrators staging a sit-in at a congressman’s office and a lumber company.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said the FBI had begun “a preliminary inquiry into the matter to determine whether any federal criminal civil rights violations occurred.”

Such an inquiry, under the same laws used in the Rodney King case, can lead to criminal prosecution and prison sentences for law enforcement officers, Marlin said.

On Thursday, nine anti-logging protesters sued the Humboldt County sheriff’s office, saying they were subjected to excessive force when deputies broke up their sit-ins by putting liquid pepper spray directly in their eyes with cotton swabs. At least one young woman also had the substance sprayed into her eyes from a few inches away.

The incidents, recorded on videotapes obtained from the sheriff’s office by lawyers for the protesters, occurred at Pacific Lumber Co. headquarters in Scotia on Sept. 25 and at Rep. Frank Riggs’ Eureka office Oct. 16. The protests were aimed at the company’s cutting of old-growth timber and a proposed federal settlement of a dispute over the Headwaters Forest.

On Friday, Riggs took to the House floor to call the demonstrators “reckless, wanton lawbreakers.”

“These were not peaceful protesters,” he said. In a statement issued later by his staff, Riggs defended the deputies’ actions and said his office had been invaded by “masked and screaming intruders.”

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been a frequent target of anti-logging demonstrators for her role in a proposed Headwaters Forest compromise, sent a letter to the Humboldt County sheriff saying the deputies’ use of pepper spray was “unwarranted and unnecessary.”

When two anti-logging protesters chained themselves to a concrete log and blocked the entrance to her San Francisco office last year, Feinstein said, federal and local police did not resort to pepper spray but instead used a grinder to chip away at the concrete and ultimately dislodge the demonstrators.

Sheriff Dennis Lewis said Thursday that the deputies used pepper spray because it was safer than grinders.

At each of the two sit-ins, the protesters joined hands inside a metal sleeve, to which they were fastened by small chains. Their lawyers said deputies had used grinders in the past to cut through the sleeves without incident.

Riggs said local law enforcement officers were “acting responsibly and courageously to protect our neighborhoods and our way of life.” He called the demonstrators “conspirators who willfully and knowingly broke the law under the guise of a 1st Amendment protest.”