ROANOKE TIMES
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993                   TAG: 9306260026
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


WHAT THE #%*$& IS THIS AWFUL STUFF?

There was so much cussing going on Friday morning, you'd have had a hard time believing these cops were volunteers.

"It's just like the inside of your eyeballs want to come off," said Vinton Officer Michael Barbieri, the smallest victim but the one who was sprayed most severely with oleoresin capsicum.

Barbieri spent almost 15 minutes plunging his head into a bucket of water, sputtering and spraying a hose into his eyes.

He wasn't alone.

At a training session Friday, six volunteers from the Salem and Vinton police departments stepped forward to be doused with OC, the newest addition to their holsters' arsenal.

Actually, the half-dozen souls staggered, choked and cussed through it.

Minutes later, though, the diminutive Barbieri was teasing Cpl. Mike St. Clair, his 6-foot 5-inch, 280-pound training officer: "Come on, big guy!" as St. Clair endured the same ordeal.

"He's my buddy," St. Clair said a few minutes later. "He gave me a cigarette."

OC reduces thrashing suspects to practically blind, stumbling, helpless bodies within seconds. But 30 to 45 minutes later - plenty of time to get an unruly suspect handcuffed and in custody - the pain disappears, with no lasting effects.

Many departments require their officers to be sprayed before handling the stuff. Others make it voluntary. The idea is to teach them discretion in using the spray and knowledge of exactly what a suspect is going through.

Bedford Police Sgt. Melvin Massie, who was sprayed three times in one day during his training, described it as " . . . someone taking a handful of sand and throwing it in your eyes. I tried to breathe - it was like a huge metal ball on my chest."

Officer David Rorer of Salem won't soon forget when he was sprayed in the face with OC during a training session months ago.

"It was excruciating," Rorer said. "I felt like a prisoner being shot."

Other officers are less poetic.

"You got any fight left in you?" asked an instructor after spraying Chris Dillman, a Salem animal control officer.

Red-faced, gagging and spraying a fountain of hose water into his face, Dillman answered loudly: "Hell no!"



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