Cambridge’s police commissioner says police won’t use pepper spray again in a situation like its 18-hour standoff Aug. 1-2 with a barricaded suspect, when the chemical drifted accidentally into the upper floors of a multifamily building on Broadway and forced out residents.
The target of the chemical, who had terrorized bystanders in Central Square with two machetes and injured two people before fleeing to his apartment, stayed put despite the pepper spray projectiles fired into his unit.
The police response showed the strength of officers’ training and professionalism, but following national guidelines on handling such a situation – including using pepper spray to try to deny a suspect a livable space – came “at too high a price,” commissioner Christine Elow said at a Wednesday meeting of the city council’s committee on public safety.
“We will not be deploying pepper spray in this manner again,” she said. A report presented to the committee gave more details: “As a densely populated city with a lot of older, multiunit buildings, there are significant barriers to any future [pepper spray] use inside of a building, particularly during a barricaded suspect situation.”
The report described how all the strategies to arrest the suspect, 51-year-old Princiano Faustin – shooting him six times with a high-speed sponge-tipped projectile while he ran toward his home, bringing in his girlfriend to persuade him to leave, turning off the power to his apartment at 243 Broadway, placing a bomb disposal robot inside to track his location in the apartment (he disabled that by tossing a towel over the device), and firing 10 containers with powder and vapor containing the chemical irritant through his apartment window – didn’t work.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26091152-250910-public-safety-committee/?embed=1
One thing that police did not do – a decision that dismayed councillors – was call in a mental health professional to help with a suspect who showed signs of mental distress. As police fired the sponge-tipped “less-than-lethal” shots at Faustin, he invited them to “shoot me again with real bullets” and also threatened to kill them, officer and police spokesperson Robert Reardon said. He also had warned he would “chop you up” with the machetes, police said.
Faustin has been at Bridgewater State Hospital since his arrest; a Cambridge District Court judge ruled on Aug. 22 he was not competent to stand trial.
Nonviolent alternatives
Since an officer shot and killed 20-year-old Arif Sayed Faisal on Jan. 4, 2023, after the Bangladeshi immigrant ran through Cambridgeport cutting himself with a large knife and then came toward an officer holding the weapon, the city has established two options to respond to people in a mental crisis: a city agency outside the police department, and a special police program. Both initiatives – the Community Safety Department’s Community Assistance Response and Engagement team, and the police department’s co-response program – employ social workers.
The Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team, a grassroots organization outside city government, also responds to people needing emotional and other support, though it does not answer 911 calls like co-response or Care. Members of the co-response team and the Care team weren’t working Aug. 1-2, a Friday night and Saturday, police said.
Even if they had been, police might not have involved a social worker. “When someone’s violent, that’s not a situation where we’re going to be using” a social worker, a police official told councillors. Officials made similar statements when they were asked why social workers then assigned to the department weren’t called to help with Faisal.
Help from psychological experts
Some councillors disagreed with the decision in the Faustin standoff. Vice mayor Marc McGovern, a social worker himself, said he could understand why police didn’t ask for psychological expertise while they were chasing Faustin to his home, but not after he was barricaded there.
“I have been involved in many deescalation situations with folks who were violent,” said McGovern – and he was assaulted in some, he said. Once Faustin was holed up in his apartment, “I completely agree that a social worker should have been there,” McGovern said. “Even if [the professional] did not take over the conversation,” the social worker “might have the expertise to help.”
McGovern; public safety committee chair Ayesha Wilson, also a social worker; and councillor Sumbul Siddiqui have sponsored a policy order for consideration at Monday’s council meeting asking the city manager to work with the police department “to review current crisis prevention protocols, strengthen them by clearly defining the role and deployment of mental health professionals and report back.”
How pepper spray spread
The pepper spray in his apartment ended up forcing him to stay in the bathroom, police said.
Police eventually entered Faustin’s apartment and arrested him after he came out of the bathroom. “We had guns pointed at him” and “he thanked [the officers],” Elow said.
The “price” of sending the chemical into the six-story affordable housing building was three residents going to the hospital and later released, and many others forced out of their homes for hours. Councillors said they were grateful officers and Faustin weren’t hurt.
Police said they consulted building management about the ventilation system and believed that cutting power to Faustin’s first-floor unit would keep the pepper spray inside. Residents on the first floor and the apartment above Faustin’s were asked to leave, and other tenants were told to remain in their units.
But once in Faustin’s space, the chemical seeped under the apartment door into the lobby, then rose through the elevator shaft and entered the upper floors through fire doors that should have been closed but were not, police said. Ventilation in those areas had not been turned off, police said. Also, a duct in Faustin’s apartment had not been closed as believed, according to a police department answer to questions about the incident from four councillors.
Build trust or buy a drone
Some people who spoke during public comment said they hadn’t noticed officers giving much attention to the uprooted residents. Police said they called ambulances to the scene before deploying the pepper spray and offered residents hotel rooms, but most didn’t take them.
McGovern asked what police are doing now to “build trust” with the residents; Elow said police have not done anything.
The police commissioner said the department may look into buying a “tactical drone” to track the movements of a barricaded suspect without giving the person a means to disable the device by covering it up, as Faustin did. Police may also check out other “less-than-lethal” equipment besides the sponge shot, she said. One councillor mentioned tasers, but Faustin was shot in the chest with a taser by Boston police responding to a domestic dispute three days before the Cambridge incident and responded by ripping the taser prongs from his chest. Police did arrest him; he was released without bail after being found mentally competent by a courthouse social worker.
The day after Faustin was arrested in Cambridge, police used pepper spray in a canister, which can be aimed at a single individual, at a pro-Palestinian demonstration on a crowded street in Harvard Square. There was no sign it affected any of the many bystanders in the area. Police said it was targeted to specific people, one of whom was arrested, and was not used for crowd control. A Cambridge ordinance forbids police to use chemical substances for crowd control.
Pepper spray as force
Police said using pepper spray during the Faustin incident and demonstration is considered a use of force. Officers must file a report, and the department decides whether the use met police requirements.
In response to a public records request, the city provided a list of 24 use-of-force incidents during 2023 and three during 2024, all of which were approved. Pepper spray was mentioned in four cases in which officers showed the canister to a person and threatened to use it but there were no reports that it was deployed.
The city withheld 38 reports for 2023 and 64 for 2024, though, on the ground that these cases are still being investigated or to protect an individual’s privacy. The withheld reports for 2023 included an instance when pepper spray was streamed into the face of one person at an Oct. 30 demonstration against the Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems. Cambridge Day obtained the report because it was filed in Cambridge District Court as part of charges brought against demonstrators.
Releasing police camera footage
Police at the public safety committee meeting Wednesday said footage from body cameras that officers now wear was important in establishing what happened in the Faustin incident. The videos from body cameras won’t be available to the public until the case against Faustin has ended, an officer said.
It’s not clear how long that might be, since Faustin cannot be tried until he is mentally competent to understand the charges against him and help his defense. That could take months or years.
A policy order on Monday’s council agenda asks the city manager to work with the police, law department and “relevant stakeholders” to propose a policy for the “timely release” of police body camera footage. When the cameras were rolled out this spring, officials said access to the videos would be governed by the state public records law. The law exempts disclosure in cases that are under investigation if release would jeopardize the investigation.
This post was updated Oct. 15, 2025, to change a reference to an “ex-girlfriend” to reflect the relationship status described by that person.
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