Last week, a jet of tear gas and peppers apply used at a police training exercise in the area reportedly drifted to a local elementary school in San Bruno, California, according to authorities. Almost 30 children and one child perished.
At the time of the affair, almost 30 students at Portola Elementary School reported experiencing symptoms including vomiting, wet eyes, wheezing and difficulty breathing, according to Matthew Duffy, director of the San Bruno Park School District. Additionally, there were reports of rashes and diarrhea in the media.
More than a year later, some individuals are also experiencing negative consequences from the airborne tear gas and pepper spray, Duffy said. Some people today well-known that they needed emergency medical care to help their children who were suffering from the airborne results.
The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office, which oversaw the crowd-control coaching practice on May 21 and launched an investigation of the affair, has apologized to the students and their families as well as the university.
But Duffy said the city may be sending a “formal text” to coroner’s officials requesting a end to all “gas-related” education at the center, which is less than half a mile from the college.
Tara Moriarty, spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, said Bay Area law enforcement agencies had conducted training at the site for more than 20 years.
” This is an unprecedented situation that we take very seriously”, she said.
Parents became more outraged this week when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that some chemical canisters used during the training session date back as far back as the 1960s.
The San Francisco County Sheriff’s Office said a preliminary investigation into the incident found that the canisters the UC Berkeley Police Department used for the training were ineffective.
” We believe, however, that these canisters had been pulled from storage”, Moriarty said.
She did not specify how long the canisters had been kept in storage.
She claimed that it’s common for law enforcement organizations to perform training with stored goods and that there “appears to be no greater health risk than using the same product that has been recently manufactured.”
But , experts say , there have been few studies that look into the long-term health and environmental effects of tear gas exposure.
On May 21, a two-hour multi-agency training course on crowd control was held in a remote location of the San Francisco County jail in San Bruno. When the police officers were instructed to use tear gas and pepper spray inside a training facility shortly before 1 p.m.
The cloud of tear gas and pepper spray did not stay within the structure, however, and drifted to the nearby elementary school.
Moriarty claimed that the Sheriff’s Office halted all upcoming training sessions as a result of the incident to review its current procedures to ensure the community is n’t in danger.
San Mateo County Environmental Health Services stated in a statement that it was looking into the incident.
The investigation will look into whether all reporting requirements were met following the incident and whether appropriate contingency plans were in place to reduce any release, the department wrote.” While there are no indications of any lingering environmental hazards at the site or in the surrounding area,” the department stated.
Since the incident occurred, Duffy said, the school district has washed down the outside areas of the school as a safety precaution. Additionally, school personnel are gathering more information about the health of the adults and students who were impacted that day. Sheriff Paul Miyamoto and the district met at a town hall meeting to discuss community concerns.
” We will also be writing a formal letter to the S. F. sheriff’s department requesting the immediate end to all gas-related training at the facility”, Duffy noted. We appreciate the time the S. F. sheriff’s department spent analyzing the circumstances surrounding that day, and we look forward to a collaboration that uncovers both necessary and inappropriate actions.
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