By PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS
Herald Staff Writer

The Coast Guard's use of pepper spray and a fire hose to prevent Cubans from
reaching the U.S. shoreline Tuesday appears to violate guidelines on the use of
force spelled out in the agency's training manuals.

Lt. Greg Magee of the Coast Guard's migrant interdiction division in Washington
said force should be used only to protect the service's crew members from bodily
harm, according to manuals used at the Maritime Law Enforcement School at
Yorktown, Va., and at a Petaluma, Calif., school the Coast Guard uses to train
boarding crews.

``It is simple,'' Magee said, without commenting on Wednesday's incident. ``Our
general use-of-force policy is, minimum force necessary to compel compliance.
You use only the force necessary depending on the circumstance -- if someone in
the water is using a knife, for example.''

Magee said an investigation will determine what prompted crew members to use a
fire hose when the six Cubans were still in their boat, and later to aim pepper
spray at swimmers striking out for shore.

``From our standpoint, until the facts are in we can't determine what that person
was thinking,'' he said, speaking of the crew's motivation.

All incidents involving the use of force are investigated, he said. Last year there
were 50 such cases.

``All were basically resolved concurring with the law enforcement officer's''
decision, Magee said. ``Force is used in self defense, and in the defense of
others.''

Miami attorney Anthony Upshaw, who left the Coast Guard in 1987 as a
lieutenant, said training manuals -- and regulations set down by each Coast
Guard district -- make it clear that disabling spray is an extreme measure.

The most extreme measure, using a firearm, is authorized only to protect an
officer's life.

``In five years in the Coast Guard and two years as a senior boarding officer I had
to draw a weapon once,'' he said, describing a predawn interception of a cargo
ship.

Pepper spray is a step down from a gun, he said, and is designed to subdue a
suspect trying to assault an officer.

``It appeared from what I saw,'' he said, speaking of television footage, ``that it
[using pepper spray] was an overuse of force . . . it was not being used to protect
Coast Guard personnel from bodily injury.''

Coast Guardsmen are taught, he said, that if a person in the water is
uncooperative, the best technique is to block escape until the person is tired and
gives up.

The frustration of coping with overwhelming numbers of illegal aliens should not
have been a factor, Upshaw said. Compared with last year's arrests of more than
1.5 million people on the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border by the Border Patrol, the
Coast Guard's migrant workload is relatively small.

Upshaw said it appeared that crew members used the spray and the fire hose to
put a quick end to a situation. Training manuals call for the senior officer on a
group of boats to be in charge of the operation, monitored by their superior officer
ashore.

``I don't know who was in charge of that scene,'' he said, ``but my impression was
that it quickly became a newsworthy event and they wanted to conclude it as
quickly as possible.''

The irony is, he said, speaking of those who used the pepper spray, ``that if those
guys [the swimmers] had started to go under, any one of them [the crew] would
have jumped into the water to save them.''

Retired Army Lt. Col. Piers Wood, an analyst with the Center for Defense
Information in Washington who studied the Coast Guard in 1997, said it has
struggled with its dual mission of saving lives and acting as a law enforcement
agency.

Since the early 1980s, that role has increasingly involved seizing drugs and
halting alien smuggling, leading to actions that have offended some U.S.
fishermen and recreational boaters.

``Many fishermen say the Guard, once their ally, now exerts itself as much to
disrupt lives as to save them,'' Mick Kronman, a Californian who writes about
maritime matters, said in Reason Magazine. ``What happened to make the Guard
go from heroism to harassment? The war on drugs.''

Jack Cowell, a Washington analyst studying migration policy, said the truth about
Tuesday's incident may be that ``this is really the way the Coast Guard meets its
goal of stopping illegal aliens.''

``What makes this unusual,'' he said, ``is that we got to see this live on TV.''