More than 19,000 NYPD officers are now equipped with Sabre 5.0, a pepper spray that’s three times more concentrated than the spray the department has long used.
"A more effective pepper spray can help reduce the amount of force needed to gain control of a suspect or emotionally disturbed person," NYPD Deputy Chief Edward Mullen told the News. According to the tabloid, the NYPD has argued that the less-potent spray had proved "unreliable" in achieving its guidebook-mandated purpose: to "subdue" an individual resisting arrest, or as self defense against an emotionally disturbed individual.
Sabre 5.0, with its concentration of .67%, is less concentrated than the strongest spray on the market, which clocks in at 1.33% and is the spray of choice in Boston and Suffolk County.
There have been several incidents in recent years of alleged and court-ruled excessive force involving pepper spray. Last July, three Occupy Wall Street protesters won $175,000 from the city after being pepper sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna back in 2011, apparently without provocation. Ultimately, Officer Bologna was not prosecuted.
A month later, fellow OWSer Imani Brown won the right to sue the NYPD for excessive force—in 2011, two officers arrested and pepper sprayed her outside of a downtown Starbucks where she was hoping to use the bathroom. And last October, a cop used pepper spray and what appeared to be a chokehold on a skateboarder in Columbus Circle. According to the NYPD, Yibin Mu, 22, ignored an order to sit still while an officer filed a report for skateboarding in an unauthorized area. Mu maintained that the forceful arrest came "without warning."
According to the NYPD, pepper spray was used 284 times in arrest situations last year, down from 337 in 2014. In 2015, 10 out of 100 forceful arrest complaints involving pepper spray fielded by the Civilian Complaint Review Board were substantiated.
