APD: Officer's pepper spray use likely within policy during anti-ICE protest

The Austin Police Department is defending an officer’s use of pepper spray during Monday’s anti-deportation protest downtown.

A viral video posted to Reddit a day after the demonstration shows an Austin police officer pushing back a crowd while his colleagues forcibly arrested a protester. The officer then deployed pepper spray into the scrum, prompting protesters to scatter.

The video sparked a furor online with many commenters condemning the officer.

The use-of-force incident was reported to the Police Department’s Force Review Unit “as is standard protocol," Police Department spokeswoman Anna Sabana said in a statement late Wednesday.

But Sabana said that “early indication shows that it does fall within policy.”

According to APD’s use of force policy, pepper spray can be used to “disperse violent crowds or riots with (prior) supervisor approval.” The policy explicitly says pepper spray should not be deployed on non-violent crowds.

“As officers arrested the subjects that engaged in graffiti, the crowd closed in on them and pepper spray was used to disperse those that refused to move back after being ordered to back up,” Sabana said in the statement. “During this time, several officers were hit by rocks that were thrown from the crowd of protestors.”

The statement did not say when the department would make a final determination.

Local and state law enforcement arrested over a dozen people during the protest and made use of pepper spray, pepper balls and tear gas.

Austin Police Chief Davis initially said on Tuesday morning that Texas Department of Public Safety troopers had deployed tear gas, not APD. She later clarified that while APD did not use tear gas, it did use pepper spray.

The anti-deportation demonstration was organized by the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation to show solidarity with protesters in Los Angeles where the Trump administration has dispatched military to respond to the largely peaceful demonstrations prompted by recent federal immigration raids.