This is Dorli Rainey, an 84-year-old participant in the Occupy Seattle protests. A couple of nights ago, she was hit in the face with pepper spray deployed by police. Pepper spray burns. Like hell. Now imagine your grandmother or great-grandmother being hit in the face with this stuff. This picture was taken after she was doused with a milky substance that's supposed to counteract the effects of the spray.*
But that's part and parcel for police departments that have responded to largely peaceful gatherings and protests with intentionally violent crowd control and suppression tactics that are designed to goad protesters into responding with like violence, finally giving law enforcement officials the official pretext to effect even more heavy-handed detainment procedures.
So this is what police departments all over the country do when they want to "restore order" and clear out OWS sites. They bean war veterans in the head with tear canisters and spray elderly women in the face with pepper spray. But the cops don't deserve all the blame -- they had their orders from higher up, after all.
*I expect crude "money shot" jokes from less-cultured conservatives, trolls and other assorted assholes. But since this is DDSS, where trolls are a genuinely endangered species constantly bordering on extinction, these comments may happen elsewhere, but not here.
