EDITORIAL Defending the Indefensible

REPRESENTATIVE Frank Riggs has not been silent about the use of pepper
spray against demonstrators in his Eureka office. He has defended the
deputies and police officers, vigorously and repeatedly.

``These were not peaceful protesters,'' Riggs has said.

According to the congressman, whose district stretches from the wine
country to the Oregon border, the muchreplayed two minute videotape does
not tell the whole story. A gang of masked intruders came in ``ransacking
the office and frightening my staff,'' he said. He said they slammed the
tree stump on the floor with such force that some of the office workers
thought it was a bomb, and they proceeded to urinate and generally create
chaos and an awful mess in the office.

``Complete terror,'' was Riggs' description. The videotape of the arrest,
he insisted, lacks that context.

This is a rather remarkable defense of street justice from a congressman
who worked as a police officer and deputy sheriff from 19761983. Even if
everything he said about the offcamera actions by the protesters were
true, the Humboldt County sheriff's deputies were no less wrong to
methodically administer pepper spray in the eyes of suspects who had locked
arms together.

The job of the officers was to make the arrest. The determination of a
punishment to fit the crime should be made by the courts, not by the cops
on the scene. And ``cruel and unusual punishment'' is not one of the options.

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