sacp81170a said:
Having been on both ends of OC, I respectfully disagree. You only get to see a few edited scenes that last maybe 10 or 20 seconds at a time on the cop shows. If pepper spray works on you(and it works on 99.9% of the population) it's gonna ruin you for 45 minutes to an hour at least. Not being disrespectful, but you should try it sometime.
With the intentional cop vs. cop instance (this was not training, but a real cop vs. cop dispute), the cop getting sprayed just raised his hand in front of his face, blocking the spray for the half-second he was in range, and then ran off like nothing happened.
How effective can it be when it has such a short range, and all someone has to do his sitck their hand in front of their face? I don't care how effective it is, it's not gonna stop someone quickly enough.
In another instance, some nut in a bar was sprayed continuously by about 3 cops for about a minute. First he poured his beer on his head, then he just stood there with his hand in front of his face for about thirty seconds. After thirty seconds of
standing still, the cops had finally gotten him in the face enough to make him slowly amble to the restroom, where he continued to stand there with one hand in front of his face, while using the other to slather water from the sink onto his face. He looked to me like he could have just stood there forever taking it, and the cops finally got tired of it and just tackled him.
I can see how pepper spray will stop someone who is just standing still,
eventually, and will dissuade a less determined, slow loving attacker, I just can't see it being useful against a pumped madman coming straight for you.
I still think scalding, sue-McDonals hot coffee, which will actually burn (as in, physically damage) someone's face and eyeballs, would be better for my own personal self defense. I'm not speaking as a tool for law enforcement in certain situations.
