6.1 University Cities

6.1.1 Durham

Durham North Carolina Police broke up the “Allen Building Demonstration” taking place February 13 1969 on the campus of Duke University in Durham using a variety of weapons, including a thermal fogger (Jolley and Olive 1969, Schreiber et al. 1971a, 1971b). The police reportedly chased protesters across campus with the fogger, including using it inside Duke Chapel (Schreiber et al. 1971a, 1971b).


B/W Image: One person wearing gas mask and helmet, centered, stepping to the right. Person is holding slim white club in left hand and pepper-fogger in right hand. Fogger is pointing forward and a white cloud is surrounding the person to the front, back, and behind. The remaining background is black.

FIGURE 6.1: Deployment of a thermal fogger by police on Duke Campus (Jolley and Olive 1969).



B/W Image: Background has brick building with steps. In front of the building from center to right, a line of 5 police officers facing front and wearing helmets & gas masks holding slim white clubs about a yard long. They are standing with legs apart and clubs in both hands in front of their bodies. On the left 5 officers similarly dressed, facing towards one another. Four slim clubs are visible, and one officer is holding what appears to be a fogger in one arm hanging down at the side.

FIGURE 6.2: Police with pepper fogger on Duke campus (Jolley and Olive 1969).


6.1.2 Berkeley

6.1.2.1 February 21 1969

A year after using the fogger on a protest held in solidarity with the Chicago Protest, police in Berkeley again deployed a fogger to clear demonstrators including striking students from outside a University Regents and Sproul Hall plaza on the University of California campus.


B/W newspaper clipping. Four people walking towards camera wearing helmets with face shields. Person on the left wearing white shirt and tie has several items hanging from belt. In right hand carrying radio with extended antenna. On right side person dressed in all black standing with a wide stance and holding pepper-fogger at hip height in right hand aimed forward. In center two more people dressed in all black, one with a short stick or club in left hand. Background is mostly cloudy with someone behind white shirt person, holding some sort of stick aloft. Glimpses of additional bodies are visible in the cloudy background.

FIGURE 6.3: Police use a pepper fogger and other chemical weapons to clear a University plaza (Associated Press 1969j).


This deployment was covered in papers across the country including the Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California) (Associated Press 1969b), The Jackson Sun (Jackson, Tennessee) (Associated Press 1969c), The Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) (Associated Press 1969a), The Sumter Daily Item (Sumter, South Carolina) (Associated Press 1969d), The New Mexican (Santa Fe, New Mexico) (Associated Press 1969e), Janesville Daily Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin) (Associated Press 1969h), and Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, Kentucky) (Associated Press 1969i).


B/W newspaper clipping. Rather difficult to make out the people differentially in the background, but there's a large group of folks standing in the back part of the photo, the mid ground is relatively empty but filling with a cloud of white smoke eminating from an area on the left that appears to be an officer holding a thermal fogger. Behind everyone is the student union.

FIGURE 6.4: Police engulf a University plaza in chemical fog (Associated Press 1969j).


Canadian newspapers detailed the fogger use as well, specifically the Red Deer Advocate Red Deer, Alberta, Canada) (Associated Press 1969f) and The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan) (Associated Press 1969g).

6.1.2.2 February 28 1969

The following week, the police in Berkeley were joined by California National Guard troops to attack strikers, and continued to use the pepper fogger (Associated Press 1969m, 1969n).


Guardsmen with bayonetted rifles and sheriff's deputies with tear and and pepper fogger walking through UC campus: B/W newspaper clipping: Eight people in masks, shields, and tied boots walking from left to right, the one in front wearing a spray fogger strapped on back and holding the hose and nozzle in front. A cloud of fog is spraying from the nozzle. The second person is carrying a bayoneted rifle upright. The others are only partially visible as they are passing behind a tree. On the right ahead of the others an additional helmeted person can be seen turning towards the left. Two slim trees are in the foreground.

FIGURE 6.5: National guardsmen and police fog UC Berkeley (Associated Press 1969k).



Four people walking away from camera, wearing helmets and holsters. Lead person has a fogger on their back and is holding the hose on the right spraying a fog ahead of them. Person on the right is carrying a bayoneted rifle raised above the left shoulder. The four are walking into the fog they’ve produced. There are some small trees to the right.

FIGURE 6.6: View from behind of the police using a pepper fogger on striking students (Associated Press 1969l).


6.1.2.3 May 15 1969

Alameda County sheriffs deployed a pepper fogger on UC Berkeley’s campus again during the “People’s Park Riots” of 1969 (Los Angeles Times 1969, Hayes 1970).

The riot apparently started when the university tried to prevent individuals living on the street from a volunteer-run park they built on a lot owned by the school (United Press International 1970).

The Sheriffs were joined by the California National Guard once again, who this time fogged neighborhoods from the back of a Jeep:


B/W photo of An old style open-top army jeep with two National Guard troops in the front and one in the rear, the one in the rear is operating a thermal fogger. They are driving down what appears to be a residential street from right to left. There are houses and cars behind them and no one in sight on the street/sidewalk/etc.

FIGURE 6.7: California National Guard’s Gas Jeep (Rosenberg 1969).

6.1.3 Seattle

Seattle Washington police deployed CN and CS gas via a new pepper fogger in their clash with “hundreds of unruly youths in the University District” on August 14 1969 (Associated Press 1969p). Witnesses recounted that the machine was “highly effective”, filling “2-3 blocks of a street with tear gas in about a minute” (Associated Press 1969p).

6.1.4 College Park

On May 4th 1970, students gathered at campuses around the country to protest President Nixon’s expansion of war into Cambodia, inlcuding in at the University of MAryland (UMD) campus in College Park (Washington Area Spark 2013). Police responded with chemical weapons that did not deter the protest, but rather moved it around the campus (Cabe 1970). By later in the day, UMD students had heard about the Ohio National Guard shooting four Kent State students and took up a position in front on and inside the UMD Chapel (Washington Area Spark 2013), which did not stop the chemical weapons barrage or the use of the fogger specifically (Oates 1970)


Black and white photo of a college quad with brick facade white column buildingsbehind trees around the left, back, and part of right sides of the frame. Eight or so police officers walking away from the camera wear riot gear. A few in dark, a few in light. One in light near the front is carrying a fogger with a shoulder strap and spraying a big cloud off to the left, obscuring a large portion of the photograph.

FIGURE 6.8: Police fog the University of Maryland (Cabe 1970).



Black and white photo of a college A whole bunch of police officers stand on or in front of a short (3 ft) brick wall surrounding the open field. A road, grass, and sidewalk are on this side of the wall, and a tree is just over it on that side. The open field behind the wall is filled with fog from one or perhaps two individuals fogging the chapel, which is where a large crowd gathers on the steps in the background. The chapel has a brick facade and white columns and a very large spire clock tower. The student protesters are visible on the steps of the chapel holding sigms.

FIGURE 6.9: Police fog the University of Maryland Chapel (Cabe 1970).


The Maryland State Police liked the GOEC fogger so much they included it in their Manual on Civil Disturbances as a tool for deploying CS gas (Maryland State Police 1972):


Black and white photo of a GOEC Pepper Fog fogger on a white ground with a maryland state police badge and in front of a brick wall. The fogger is in the mid right and points off to the left.

FIGURE 6.10: Maryland State Police’s GOEC pepper fogger (Maryland State Police 1972).


6.1.5 Iowa City

Johnson County sheriffs - including two deputies carrying pepper foggers - used chemical weapons against protesters in Iowa City, Iowa IA on May 6 1971 (Eckholt 1971).

The chemicals deployed smelled like insecticides and were described in print as “unidentified” because the Sheriff refused to publicly name the compounds, including to the news media (Eckholt 1971).

6.1.6 Minneapolis

Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in cities around the US on May 10 1972 to demonstrate against the use of mines in Vietnam harbors (Associated Press 1972a). In Minneapolis, crowds totalling a thousand protestered gathered on and near the University of Minnesota campus and police responded with chemical weapons deployed via grenades, sprays, a helicopter and a thermal fogger (Associated Press 1972b, Star Tribune 1972).

The fogger was used to direct the crowd around campus and spread gas over large areas, such as the area known as Scholars Walk (~0.25 mile from Washington Avenue to the Auditorium) (Star Tribune 1972).

6.1.7 Gainesville

Similarly to the anti-mine protests in Minneapolis, on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida Highway Patrol deployed a riot vehicle dubbed “The Monster” which “spewed tear gas” (Associated Press 1972b). Although a fogger is not mentioned specifically, this is the same agency (Florida Highway Patrol) that first deployed thermal foggers via a truck in 1968 (Tschenschlok 1995, Lorentze 2018).