A "mistake"

A US Park Police spokesperson said Friday in an interview it was a “mistake” to insist in a statement on Tuesday that it didn’t use tear gas the day before in a Washington, DC, park to disperse a crowd ahead of President Trump’s photo op, explicitly noting that pepper balls shot by officials irritate the eyes and cause tears.

“The point is we admitted to using what we used,” Sgt. Eduardo Delgado said. “I think the term ‘tear gas’ doesn’t even matter anymore. It was a mistake on our part for using ‘tear gas’ because we just assumed people would think CS or CN,” two common forms of tear gas.

  Vox

Uh-huh. Because we're all so "up" on the exact forms of tear gas, and you didn't want us to imagine it was one of the forms it wasn't. Sure.

But then, shortly before 4 pm, Park Police acting Chief Gregory Monahan walked back from the spokesperson’s comments and used the “tear gas” phrase again. “United States Park Police officers and other assisting law enforcement partners did not use tear gas or OC Skat Shells to close the area at Lafayette Park in response to violent protestors,” he said, referencing a type of canister found on the scene.

Just come out with it: what DID you use?

On Friday, Delgado maintained their original statement was accurate as it relates to the Park Police: “No tear gas was used by USPP officers.” US Park Police used only those nonlethal weapons as law enforcement forcibly pushed peaceful protesters away from the White House. In fact, he said — as he has before — that his agency doesn’t carry tear gases known as CN, even though canisters of all of them were found on the scene. As for CS, the agency doesn’t carry the specific type found on the Square, but it does carry CS in general.

Delgado couldn’t comment on whether or not other federal agencies, like the Secret Service, used tear gas at the protest. All law enforcement agencies involved in the violent dispersal, though, have denied launching tear gas.

[...]

“I’m not going to say that pepper balls don’t irritate you,” Delgado said about the Tuesday statement, noting they contain capsicum, an irritant derived from pepper plants. “I’m not saying it’s not a tear gas, but I’m just saying we use a pepper ball that shoots a powder.”

Fine.

The response became a national controversy in itself, with experts in policing tactics calling the distinction semantic. “Tear gas” is a broad term, often defined as a synthetic chemical irritant. Pepper spray is a naturally derived chemical irritant that causes many effects similar to that of common types of tear gas, including temporary blindness and a burning sensation in the nose.

[...]

“It was kind of a fault on our part just not saying in the first place ‘we did not use CN or CS, we used smoke and pepper balls,’ and that would’ve made it a moot point,” Delgado said. “Some people claim we purposefully tried to mislead by saying ‘we didn’t use tear gas, we used pepper balls.’ ... That was not our intention.”

Of course not.