They pepper-sprayed babies
The City of Portland is settling with a dozen protestors that were pepper sprayed or otherwise mistreated by the police in anti-war and anti-Bush demonstrations under ex-Chief Kroeker’s watch. They’ll receive $300,000 from the city. The city wants to avoid going to trial, because a jury could conceivably award far more.
It gets you to thinking — could you make a career out of that? Protesting and suing? I guess that’s kind of a nasty thing to do, but it sounds fun. Protesting is fun. Getting pepper sprayed, okay, not so fun. Getting paid, on the other hand: fun.
Hopefully, cases like this will result in improved police tactics (i.e. NOT pepper-spraying babies), making my career idea impossible.
Photo: Ryan Wise
I was pepper-sprayed once. It sucked. It felt like someone lit my face on fire.
I’ve been downwind of people being pepper-sprayed and that was bad enough for me to want to avoid it in the future.