In my city we have seen several peaceful protesters (some quite some distance away from police) be nearly killed by less lethal ammunition. Being hit in the head or neck by a rubber bullet will drop a person to the ground unconscious instantly. This means they can even hit their head again against pavement. Nobody has died yet, but they are clearly extremely dangerous.
We have also seen the use of tear gas. I don't want the police to hurt anyone, but I haven't seen any long term damage from its use.
If police are going to use force, from what I have seen, tear gas is less dangerous. It is still awful. I'd rather it not be used, but I just wanted to share what I've seen.
Police appear to be misusing rubber bullets, possibly on purpose.
Rubber bullets are supposed to be fired at shin height, to achieve the appropriate mix of pain and risk reduction. They’re not zero risk because of ricochets, but flat, low trajectories help. It should go without saying that they should only be used when necessary, but if they must be used there is a way it should be done.
The number of people being struck in the chest and head by rubber bullets implies that the cops are aiming for the head, a gross abuse of force if true.
Police appear to be misusing rubber bullets, possibly on purpose.
It used to be batons. Then beanbag guns. Then it was tasers. Then rubber bullets.
Every time the police are given a new tool, it is used to its maximum force, which is scary considering so many departments are now getting military equipment without military training in how to use it right.
The politicians who authorize these purchases don't seem to understand that police are not trained to use minimum force in a life-threatening situation. The cop shooting a guy in the foot to get him to drop a weapon is just Hollywood. In real life, cops are trained to shoot for the chest to kill because in real life when they draw their guns, it's almost always a life-or-death situation.
Give a cop a "less lethal" weapon, and he still uses it with his shoot-to-kill training. Police officers aren't soldiers, but we're turning them into soldiers.
Important distinction lies between "life-or-death" and "perceived life-or-death". The leeway given to police over civilians in this matter seems at the root of a lot of these issues.
I learned that at combat training; up until then I assumed they were basically rubber paint balls with a higher velocity. We asked why we had to use chalk rounds for training (basically a 9mm pistol powder charge with a chalk bullet in front of it) instead of rubber bullets, and our combat instructor laughed and said he didn't want to see anyone blinded, unconscious, or permanently damaged, so they were a no go, even when we were wearing ballistic vests, helmets and face shields. Those chalk rounds still hurt like crazy, and would break skin through military camo uniforms; can't imagine being unloaded on with rubber bullets without protection.
So, basically these cops don't actually know how to use the weapons they are wielding? If they used those rubber bullets against realistic targets they would learn how to use them properly.
I feel like rubber bullets should be serialized, so you can know who fired it. It shouldn’t be too hard, they’re both extremely large and consumed in relatively small quantities.
Why in the world? You'll have no trouble finding videos of police blatantly misusing them in broad daylight. There are no consequences because... there are no consequences. Why would serializing rubber bullets help? Are we going to collect handfuls of them off the ground and then conjecture as to which officer fired which bullet?
They're not penetration rounds, so will likely ricochet off the individual. After which, they'll co-mingle with the rounds scattered around by all of the officers. Except in isolated cases that don't involve multiple officers, but then the serial number is a moot point.
So while a serial number can prove that a particular round came from a specific officer, proving a direct connection between any specific damage and a specific round would be an area of uncertainty and conjecture.
And even if you do keep track of an individual round, the above argument itself would allow for officers/lawyers to argue that case anyway, introducing enough reasonable doubt to weasel out of repercussions.
Why would it matter who fired it? Police are not holding police accountable for violent assaults.
Even if you were to ID the attacker, qualified immunity prevents you from suing them personally for violating your rights. You sue the police department, and then the taxpayer pays the settlement, and the cop suffers no negative consequences.
> A white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck opened fire on two people during his 19-year career and had nearly 20 complaints and two letters of reprimand filed against him.
Yep they come in a handful of sizes. The more common size for these protests seem to be around 2 inches in diameter.
To put that in perspective, try to make the largest circle you can make with your index and thumb (think OK symbol shape). That's more or less the shape of these things and they are effectively a thin layer of rubber with a solid steel core. The inside of your finger circle is the steel and the thickness of your fingers is the rubber.
It does help, thanks, and it's also terrible, because it sounds like the police would think "oh it's fine, these things aren't lethal" and then shoot people willy-nilly with what are basically big steel cylinders.
Some are, usually they’re packed into 12ga shot shells, but those are limited in their velocity due to their tendency to penetrate rather than bounce off the victims. The bigger ones are able to strike further and harder with a reduced risk of penetration.
At the paintball size it’s now more common to see CS filled paintballs. Those don’t require a huge amount of kinetic energy to work, although exposure to CS gas has its own long term side effects.
Those paintballs are filled with oleoresin capsicum (OC) which is a far more persistent and "persuasive" substance. Getting hit with a CS paintball would be ineffectual due to the small amount and the fact that it wears off quickly.
What "long term side effects" does CS have? The US Army (at least) routinely puts all soldiers through a CS filled gas chamber as part of chemical warfare training and has done so for decades.
There are no longitudinal studies, because it is very difficult to find a sample of repeatedly tear-gassed subjects over relatively long timeframes. Hong Kong is a good example though, where estimates are that ~90% of the population have been exposed. In Hong Kong, long-term exposure has been connected with rashes, respiratory problems and chloracne.
I see from another reply from him that herewulf that you reply to has been repeatedly exposed to concentrates cs over multiple years.
eitland has been exposed to concentrated cs at least once, Anigbrowl multiple times including more than just once just this last week and it seems to be common in military training from what I read so I guess it is in fact well studied and reasonably harmless compared to many alternatives.
That said I agree with a number of people here that in most cases the best alternative might be to talk to people instead, and to not kill suspects in custody, obviously, and also to not handcuff and throw people on the ground when all that should be necessary was to ask simple questions.
That's extremely optimistic and I admire you for thinking of it.
Surely though simply requiring all police officers to have their cameras on 24/7, with instant firing for switching them off while on-duty, or taping them. I've seen both during the protests. When the cops killed the BBQ guy, it was like 50 officers on site. All had their cameras off.
I'd agree that traceable rubber bullets is for much further down the line. First you need prosecution of any officer shown using a gun at a person's head or upper-torso when they're not responding to a situation of immediate threat of loss of life. Seems the evidence should be there for that.
Swift prosecution, and where appropriate conviction, of police abuses would help to quell the current unrest IMO. Like on Reddit yesterday I saw video of an officer placing a stick in an already subdued persons hand, then beating them in the head and retrieving the stick ... is there any reason that person isn't already in jail? They should fast track prosecutions, have them in prison - of found guilty - by the end of the week.
Swift, open and impeccable justice is called for.
You can't entirely blame individual officers IMO, watching riot footage knee-on-neck is clearly a widely adopted technique, presumably it's taught. And putting someone in a riot with a weapon, we should expect aggressive actions, it's a natural human response that can't easily be trained out.
Mandatory gun cameras for riot police might be useful as this point though?
I don't think that would help as the bullets would eventually end up on the group with no accountability of who it hit or was aimed at.
I think it would be better to have a camera that takes a picture every-time a trigger is pulled. Then again nothing stops them from finding a way to disable it like the body cameras.
In the UK (N.Ireland) rubber baton rounds used to (not sure about currently) have to be shot to ricochet off something, so you would fire it a few feet infront of the protestors with the round deflecting up to the legs/lower body and losing some of its velocity during the ricochet.
That might have been the official doctrine, but the British Army absolutely used them to kill people, often firing directly at the head or chest at close range.
When I was at school they[0] brought round a rubber bullet (I presume it was a plastic bullet actually but they called it rubber). It was a light grey, featureless cylinder, flat at both ends, at least as my memory has it. It was surprisingly light, seemed to have barely any heft at all.
We were told it was the very bullet that killed a protester in northen ireland.
[0] I can't remember who 'they' were, an ant-violence group I guess.
And that’s why they should only be applied once de-escalation and containment have failed. There is no such thing as a non-lethal round, the correct term is “less-lethal”, and as such should only be applied when justified.
Also, more than a thousand people were killed by Tasers in North America alone. This is an outdated (2017) list with names.
https://truthnottasers.blogspot.com/
Non-lethal my ass, I'd say.
Your statement is implying that the overuse of force is only in retaliation to attacking cops - have you not seen the dozens of videos over the last few days of people being shot at or gassed for protesting peacefully? Or being rammed into with cars?
According to Wikipedia's separate article for plastic bullets, they were developed to be less lethal than rubber (no citations for it though). IMHO, this could teach a useful lesson, that even the ones intended to harm less can be made harmful to the point of deadliness. I think it depends on the (ab)user, even dihydrogen monoxide is deadly when abused.
Just wanted to "[point] out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned" and "[give a tiny bit] more information about the topic" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.) :/
The reason is more practical. The only effective use of tear gas is against peaceful untrained civilians. It doesn't work against looters and vandals because they are highly mobile and aren't going to stick around long enough for tear gas to be effective. Provocateurs and ex-military are trained against the mind game that tear gas is. I know this because I've stood in a tent filled with tear gas reciting the UCMJ while my unmasked sergeant looked on, himself seemingly unaffected by the gas. Tear gas does not affect an individual trained in it. The only people you're instilling fear into is untrained moms and dads and children who are peacefully exercising their 1A right to stand there and breathe it in.
The use of tear gas is unconscionable mainly because it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. Its only purpose is to make its user feel strong laying waste to crowds of unruly women and children and stop them screaming at you.
> If police are going to use force, from what I have seen, tear gas is less dangerous. It is still awful. I'd rather it not be used, but I just wanted to share what I've seen.
It's worth noting here that tear gas is generally prohibited to use during wartime. Bunch of treaties that countries have signed forbids the usage of tear gas.
But, seems what's not fine to use in war against enemy combatants, is fine to use against your own people in order to control crowds of people. Something here feels wrong, if it's put like this.
I'm neither agreeing/disagreeing with you, just worth noting how the rest of the world considers tear gas.
I suspect those sorts of blanket bans for warfare had more to do with easing enforcement (are those canisters tear gas or nerve gas? Doesn't matter, they're banned) and reducing availability of equipment that could easily be re-purposed to deliver lethal or maiming chemical weapons than any particular horror associated with tear gas per se. I mean bombs are allowed in war, but my preference for getting badly tear-gassed rather than having a bomb fall anywhere near me is pretty high.
(Nb I don't intend this as support of any particular actions by the police lately)
Part of the rationale is that tear gas and other chemical weapons are indiscriminate. When you aim a bomb or gun, you know what you're aiming at, and if a civilian is in your sights, you can choose not to fire.
Once you release chemical weapons, you can't control them, they go wherever the wind takes them. This could be in the direction of civilians or friendly troops.
Here in Seattle they used so much tear gas in Capitol Hill last night that it was seeping into homes. A coworker reported that his 3 month old child woke up coughing like crazy.
We are in the middle of a pandemic in which the disease attacks the lungs and is primarily spread through water droplets expelled from a person's nose or mouth. Due to the number of factors involved, it will be incredibly difficult to link tear gas and pepper spray directly to deaths in comparison to rubber bullets. However it seems obvious that the overreliance police forces have on these chemicals is much more dangerous today that it would be traditionally.
A peaceful protester posted on twitter the other day, after taking a direct hit in the eye by a gas cannister - he was going for surgery, and is most likely going to lose his eye. Some footage of the incident emerged, but I presume the chance of him getting any kind of compensation is nil.
We have also seen the use of tear gas. I don't want the police to hurt anyone, but I haven't seen any long term damage from its use.
If police are going to use force, from what I have seen, tear gas is less dangerous. It is still awful. I'd rather it not be used, but I just wanted to share what I've seen.