Ok, perhaps researchers have not communicated their findings well enough.  There have been many individuals surprised by the pepper spraying at the University of California at Davis.  It is not clear exactly why however.  

First, most of the companies that create such technology as pepper sprays, light grenades, rubber bullets and the like are in the US, Israel and UK (Omega Foundation)  - the most advanced democracies are the ones that helped create and now sustain the industry.  Why?  Democratic political leaders do not want to have their victims of state repression with obvious injuries and most individuals are interested in political order but not in excessive violence being used while it is being sought.  The solution? Democratic governments needed to repress in a way that did less obvious physical damage to the targets.  Next thing you know, we have products that do just that.  What stands out about the current context is that the nature of the "threat" was somewhat unclear (the students were just sitting there at Davis) and the police officer seemed so casual about pepper spraying (look at his gait; it appears as if he is just going for a nice stroll or walking his dog).  The latter is by far the most troubling because the officer might as well be some robot moving from left to right, emitting something into the students as if to disinfect the dirty children.  Perhaps this is the next step: drone protest police or Robo-Riot Cop.  The youth occupied space but one has to wonder, is spraying some orange-like substance that stings the eyes as well as throat and dragging some of the countries future along the ground the best that American security forces could come up with?  Is this the best that the US government could come up with?  

Second, the US government, through police departments, have consistently responded to challenging protest activity with aggressive protest policing whenever they felt threatened.  In some earlier research with Sarah Soule, I showed that this response has persisted across time: when threatened, the police act aggressively.  This is what they do. Additionally, in some other work, we showed that it also matters exactly who protests: at a certain point (when blacks were protesting), they were even more likely to be treated aggressively.  This is what they did.  There is nothing new here but the quality of the video footage, the images virality and the fact that this took place in the last week.  Recall the now ancient footage of African Americans being hosed, beaten and bitten by dogs.  Same as it ever was.  At least back then the police put a little umpf into their repressive action. You could see them sweating, putting in some effort into the swing of the baton and you knew that there was a conflict.  With the robotic like gestures of the Davis incident it will be interesting what people think of this event in 20-30 years.  

The call for reflection and action is clear: we need to better understand what is threatening and to whom.  We also need to figure out exactly who is accountable for what.  If the same degree of attention to political accountability that was used at Penn State could be focused on situations like this, then someone might actually be held responsible.  

So, with the use of non-lethal repressive techniques/activities in the news it is worthwhile to revisit some earlier research that was largely ignored on the topic.  

In an effort to reduce the blowback of popular outrage against lethal repressive techniques being used against citizens protesting, democracies pioneered the creation of non-lethal activities like light grenades, rubber bullets and the like.  This reduced blowback from the event as it could be shown that governments were being careful and not especially brutal.  This also reduced blowback because these new techniques quite frequently did not leave any physical evidence.  Hard to have a photo op with no bruises or blood.  

Once the industry was created, there was an interest in developing an export industry on the product (see the table from the Omega Foundation report above; full report provided here).  This is where the repressive entrepeneurial spirit "kicked in" and globally distributed their wares as well as an increase in the global use of related repressive activities.  Interesting, there is little scholarship that talks about whether democratic countries are associated with diverse forms of repression outside of their borders.   As one of the strongest findings in the social sciences is still that democracies do not fight one another and that they are generally less repressive against their own citizens than autocracies, this is perhaps the new frontier or with the School of the Americas simply a new version of some old arguments - some know how to repress and teach as well as supply others to do it as well.