http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us...ages.html?_r=1

To Kamran Loghman, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980s, the incident at Davis violated his original intent.

“I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Mr. Loghman said in an interview.

Mr. Loghman, who also helped develop guidelines for police departments using the spray, said that use-of-force manuals generally advise that pepper spray is appropriate only if a person is physically threatening a police officer or another person.

In New York, for example, a police commander who sprayed several women in an Occupy demonstration last month faced disciplinary proceedings. The New York Police Department says pepper spray should be used chiefly for self-defense or to control suspects who are resisting arrest.
@Buffalobiian: BTW, I've seen you find excuses for these wack acts of violence by saying it happened because they didn't get "permission, approval" to protest. I'll say once again that people here don't just beg their oppressors for the opportunity to protest or demonstrate against them because obviously they would say no. There is something called "freedom of assembly" in America, where America was supposedly founded on the right to assembly (protest). This doesn't mean you have to go through a freaking bureaucracy to protest and that isn't even something that is expected to happen in this country. They put this in our heads starting in elementary school, that it's an "inalienable right", a foundation that "America" EXPLICITLY set in place during its creation.