Half Moon Bay man goes to trial over pepper spray incident By MATT KAPKO Half Moon Bay Review September 15, 2004 In Humboldt County the world's largest forest of old growth coastal redwood trees towers hundreds of feet above the ground. Scattered throughout this magnificent 2,000-year-old forest that includes the tallest trees in the world are vast open fields - evidence of clear-cut logging. A long, unsettling history of logging and anti-logging interests has created an intense political climate in this otherwise rural, far-off place. The pull between beauty and commerce came to a violent head on three typically rainy days in the fall of 1997 when police armed with Q-tips applied pepper spray directly to the eyeballs of nine protestors, including Half Moon Bay native Noel Tendick. Tendick's residency in Humboldt County was brief - but eventful. Then 20 years old, Tendick decided to get actively involved in the environmental cause there and support the encampments of protestors who use civil disobedience as a way to prevent logging. His work ended as abruptly as it began. After the pepper spray incident, Tendick and the eight others filed a lawsuit against Humboldt County law enforcement officials claiming they used excessive force to quell the non-violent protests. Now, more than seven years after the incidents, Tendick and seven of the other protestors are once again having their day in federal court. The case is being heard this week in San Francisco. The protestors have fought a laborious legal battle since the case was first thrown out in 1998 by a judge later deemed too biased to decide the case. The numerous appeals in this case have brought it to the Supreme Court of the United States three times. Tendick and the other plaintiffs have won every appeal since 2000, when the case was first ordered reheard. The outcome of this current trial is expected to be decided sometime next week. Recalling his decision to join other activists in Humboldt County, Tendick says his level of commitment and involvement grew beyond his expectations almost immediately. "I saw a 1,000-year-old tree cut down right behind me and I just became completely committed," he said. "When I saw the trees getting cut, that's when I decided to step it up." He and three others took the battle to Bear Creek, a Pacific Lumber Company logging site, where they broke into pairs to lock themselves to logging equipment with a steel lockbox. It was 4 a.m. on Oct. 3, 1997. "This is the last pristine, unprotected old growth in the world," Tendick said. "I was willing to put my body on the line ... get arrested, go to jail, that was something I was willing to do." The protestors were following a "higher law," he said. Law enforcement officials showed up by 8 a.m. and "they started right away with the threats of pepper spray," Tendick said, adding that he thought the threats nothing more than idle. "I was aware there was a possibility, but I continued to believe in my heart that they wouldn't do it," he said. "My understanding was that pepper spray was a defensive tool used against violence." But by 9 a.m., Tendick's eyelids were forced open and pepper spray was applied directly to his eyeballs. Following that, law enforcement officials gave him a full spray of the chemical agent on his eyes at extremely close range. He calls it torture. "I don't use that term lightly. By all definitions of the word in the Geneva Conventions, this was torture," he said. A graphic video of the incident can be viewed online at www.nopepperspray.org. Michael McCurdy was locked to the bulldozer with Tendick and received the same treatment from law enforcement. Two others, who were locked to another logging apparatus, unlocked themselves in response to the threats of pepper spray. A total of nine protestors were pepper sprayed by this method at three separate incidents. The pain Tendick endured from the incident is still with him. It blinded him for at least six hours and kept his eyes burning throughout the night as he sat in a cell. He said that, while that pain withered over time, the emotional and psychological effects remain. "The damages are still with us," he said. "You can't receive that kind of brutality without being effected deeply. Being my first direct action it had a really traumatizing effect on my self expression, expression of my ideals." Tendick, now 27, frowns upon the idea that there might be something different about him or the others that enabled them to take their beliefs to such limits. "Everyone has this capacity. Everyone has the capacity to defend something with their life. Parents can definitely understand that," he said. Trying the case is the same legal team that won a federal civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police Department in 2002. In that case, law enforcement officials were ordered to pay $4.4 million to the defendants. "For us it's never been about the money," Tendick said. "It's saying not only to law enforcement in Humboldt County but law enforcement throughout the country that they don't have the right to torture people for their beliefs, no matter what they are." Tendick said it's difficult to be in court "sitting three feet away from the guys who ordered us to be tortured," referring to Humboldt County's then-sheriff Dennis Lewis and current Sheriff Gary Philp, who was chief deputy at the time of the incident. "When I saw those guys it brought out so much feeling of anger and guilt, but it was more sad to see how they've spent seven years defending torture," he said. "Citizens of Humboldt are paying for the police to justify torture." Humboldt County and the city of Eureka are also named in the lawsuit. The Humboldt County Sheriff's Department declined to comment for this story. "They have this Orwellian logic where they say they didn't want to hurt us, so they pepper sprayed us," Tendick said. Home