Why do police officers use pepper spray? — update

UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying UC Davis demonstrators, 18 November 2011¹
Credit: Wikipedia

Pepper spray was hailed as a safe weapon of last resort, but in practice, has proven to be dangerous & sometimes deadly & is too often used as the first resort.

This link no longer works:

http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/pepper-spray-psychology/

but this one does (14 November 2018):

https://www.wired.com/2011/11/pepper-spray-psychology/
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¹ Wikipedia: “UC Davis pepper spray incident”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident

Update 14 November 2018: link fixed, image & text added.

/ officers, pepper, pepper-spray, police, spray, pigs /