Please Justify This Police Action For Me

[Rev. Rye]

I should point out that the hypothermia claim is very questionable at best. Literally every source that talks about pepper spray and hypothermia suggests that one exacerbates the other:

Be careful of cold temperatures. You should flush any area that’s been pepper-sprayed with cool, fresh water and stand in front of a fan — a fresh-air breeze helps. But given that capsaicin stimulates heat receptors, which in turn triggers the body’s cooling response, overexposure to cold water can be dangerous in winter weather. “This dual effect increases the risk of hypothermia if victims are decontaminated with cold water on cold days,” wrote the authors of the 2004 paper.

And as for whether concern or sadism is more likely, I’d propose a third possibility: that they just didn’t properly de-escalate it without resorting to violence. And, yes, I count getting pepper sprayed as violence.