A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (25 page)

The Barf Beamers

A non-lethal weapon with the potential to do untold damage is the previously mentioned "LED Incapacitator" (LEDI). Designed like a flashlight, this light saber (also dubbed a barf beamer and a puke saber) is intended to totally incapacitate the people at whom it is aimed by emitting multiple light frequencies and colors that confuse the brain, resulting in symptoms ranging from discomfort and disorientation to temporary blindness and nausea.

It has been suggested that LEDIs be installed in prisons so that riots can be stopped with the flip of a switch. Police vehicles with large versions mounted on top for riot control have also been proposed. But if LEDIs can be so easily employed on a mass scale and mounted on buildings, there is little that would stop police from dispersing even a mildly rowdy, but legal, political citizen protest and shutting down entire city blocks with virtually no resistance.

"Sergeant Pepper," UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident
(AP Photo/The Enterprise, Wayne Tilcock, File)

Devices such as LEDIs facilitate a non-dramatic, palatable use of force. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has praised the LEDI device for its potential to peacefully apprehend border jumpers and resistant suspects and control riotous crowds. (DHS has also expressed interest in yet another non-lethal weapon in the form of security bracelets, a.k.a. "taser bracelets," which could be used to control crowds, quell protesters and inflict pain compliance on suspects from a distance.)
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Pepper Spray

In 1982 pepper spray (oleoresin capsicum or OC spray) was developed for use by the postal service to prevent attacks by dogs and other animals. Pepper spray is a mixture synthesized from capsaicin, a bitter compound found in hot peppers, that produces a burning sensation upon contact with the skin.
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However, OC spray is highly concentrated, which makes it about three hundred times as strong as jalapeño peppers and five times as strong as commercially available pepper-spray blends.
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The mixture is so extraordinarily painful as to force victims into compliance and submission. It has been reported that if left untreated, the burning can last between forty-five and sixty minutes and cause temporary blindness for about a half an hour.
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Incredibly, Pepper Ball Technologies has now devised a paint ball-like weapon that shoots pepper spray in a "ball" form at a rate of 300 feet per second or 12 shots per second, attacking the victim's throat, nose and eyes with even greater force than the spray.
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Clearly, pepper spray is a potent tool in the arsenal of compliance weapons. Who could forget the stark photograph of the black-garbed policeman pepper spraying the University of California students in Berkeley as they sat on the ground in the lotus position in 2011? As part of the Occupy protests, these students were quietly, passively exercising their right to protest. However, "Sergeant Pepper," as this policeman became known, had other ideas.
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Sound Cannons

A more technologically advanced weapon in the toolkit of the American police force is the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) or "sound cannon." Developed by the American Technology Corporation, these sound cannons have a range of three city blocks, or roughly 980 feet.
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The sound waves emitted from the LRAD device are of a high frequency which can trigger pain responses.
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To compare the LRAD to everyday sounds, a normal conversation measures sixty decibels and a lawn mower registers at ninety.
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Sound cannons are usually operated at a volume of 120 decibels, while the threshold of pain is about 130, depending on the person's tolerance level.
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However, the LRAD's maximum volume override is 146 decibels, a level that can seriously impair the hearing of its victims.

Before being unveiled on the public in 2009, the LRAD was tested on pirates who attacked the cruise ship
Seabourn Spirit
off the coast of Somalia in 2005. It crippled the attackers, who were armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and deterred their plan to overcome the
Seabourn Spirit
. Sound cannons were later used as a domestic weapon to disperse American citizens at the 2009 G-20 Summit.

Skin on Fire

Rumsfeld's Ray Gun, designed for use by the military and heavily promoted for use domestically in crowd-control situations, uses the Active Denial System (ADS), which dispenses brief, high-energy waves at an individual, resulting in a sensation of severe burning pain. As one reporter explained, the $51 million crowd-control device "rides atop a Humvee, looks like a TV dish, and shoots energy waves 1/64 of an inch deep into the human skin."
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The ADS weapon directs electromagnetic radiation toward its targets at a frequency of 95 GHz. Upon contact with the skin, the energy in the waves turns to heat, causing the water molecules in the skin to heat to around 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Experiments were conducted on volunteer test subjects in 2003 and 2004 at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The results indicated that ADS causes pain within two to three seconds and becomes intolerable within five seconds, the intent being that the pain would be severe enough to cause a person to flee. As a test volunteer explained, "For the first millisecond, it just felt like the skin was warming up. Then it got warmer and warmer and felt like it was on fire... As soon as you're away from that beam your skin returns to normal and there is no pain."
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The Air Force also explored the weapon's ability to control riots and unruly crowds by firing the ADS beam at volunteers acting as protesters or intruders. When the volunteers were zapped by the beam, they held their hands up and were given fifteen seconds to cool down before being targeted again. Volunteers were required to remove eye glasses, buttons, zippers and watches for fear that exposure to the beam could cause "hot spots" or severe burns. However, actual targets–such as average, ordinary American citizens–would certainly not be given the opportunity to remove such objects before being fired upon.

Although the military has been guarded about the radiation weapon's effect on humans, several medical professionals insist that ADS beams can cause severe long-term health problems, including corneal damage, cancer, and cataracts. In fact, Dominique Loye of the International Committee of the Red Cross notes that ADS can result in "new types of injuries we're not aware of and may not be capable of taking care of."
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And as journalist Kelly Hearn points out, there are more questions than answers right now about how the weapon works, "what it does to the body and how it will be used in the streets of Basra and Baghdad or, one day, Boston."
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Reportedly on orders from the United States Justice Department, a version of ADS has been developed by the Raytheon Corporation for use by local police departments. Someday, according to a Raytheon spokesperson, ADS may be "miniaturized down to a hand-held device that could be carried in a purse or pocket and used for personal protection instead of something like Mace."
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Tear Gas

Tear gas, like the LRAD, can be very hazardous and harmful to innocent civilians, and wind can carry tear gas away from the intended center of action, putting innocent bystanders in harm's way. In March 2010 police used tear gas on University of Maryland students after their basketball team defeated Duke. The crowd took to the streets, ripped down traffic signs, and allegedly shook a bus on U.S. Route 1. Mounted police fired tear gas and sand bags to disperse the crowd, eventually resulting in bloodshed.
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During the April 2010 "Springfest," an annual party held off-campus at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, police utilized various riot control practices when those enjoying the festivities became rowdy. Officers from six police agencies responded to the apparent disruption, and altercations took place between them and several of the 8,000 partiers.
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After pepper spray and tear gas were deployed, the partiers dispersed. Once the gas and haze settled, over thirty arrests had been made.
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Some More 'Nice' Weapons

Police even have weapons that can shoot around corners. One such firearm, the "Israeli Corner Shot Weapon," uses a video monitor to track targets from around corners. This allows police officers to shoot safely at targets from a 90-degree angle while tracking them on the projector screen.
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SWAT teams all across the country are hopeful about the advancements and new possibilities that this weapon brings. Captain Mike Shearer of Akron, Ohio, stated that this new weapon allows the police to "[e]xpose a weapon, expose a lethal threat, without exposing any part of your body... So it looks like a very nice weapon."
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Other weapons that have appeared in the arsenal of police units across the country are metal and wooden batons, riot guns, flashbang and smoke grenades, and sedative darts. The water cannon is another potent weapon that the police force has used, including on protesters during the Civil Rights Movement. The average water cannon has the ability to knock a person down from approximately one hundred yards away
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Furthermore, some countries have gone as far as to dye the water and lace it with tear gas in order to wreak havoc on its victims. Police units in India have been known to dye the water, thus making it easier for law enforcement to recognize and target protesters as they flee the scene.
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In the past, water cannons have drawn their water from large natural bodies of water, fire hydrants, or even fire engines. Currently, however, water cannons are powered by kinetic pumps, which use a rotor propeller to shoot the water outward while simultaneously pressurizing it. A device called the deluge gun, which can be controlled remotely by a single person, allows greater control and precision for the cannon's target.
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The Trouble with Non-Lethal Weapons

There is a serious problem with "non-lethal, non-deadly" weapons: how they are used–or abused–largely depends on the individuals and agencies operating them. For example, as we have seen, many police forces around the world unabashedly use tasers as compliance weapons rather than as alternatives to deadly force. In these countries, tasers are more often used against passive resisters and stubborn individuals (i.e., people who talk back), while more deadly force is reserved for armed offenders. Consequently, abuses are on the rise and opposition to tasers is mounting worldwide, especially given the sharp increase in sudden deaths accompanying use of tasers.
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Also, we know very little about these non-lethal weapons. For instance, despite assurances from Homeland Security that LEDIs cannot do any real damage, the research is still out on the long-term effects of many of these non-lethal weapons. As with tasers, which have resulted in nearly 500 deaths over the past few years, LEDIs might cause greater than expected damage to individuals who are especially susceptible to their effects.

Moreover, non-lethal weapons such as LEDIs may not reduce the number of shootings by police. In Houston, Texas, for example, the introduction and routine use of tasers did not reduce the number of people shot, killed, or wounded by the police.
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Nevertheless, while the use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers and LEDIs may not necessarily reduce the number of civilian casualties, they have been largely accepted as the humane alternative to deadly force because they make the use of force appear far less dramatic and violent than it has in the past.

Contrast, for instance, the image of police officers beating Rodney King with billy clubs as opposed to police officers continually shocking a person with a taser. Both are severe forms of abuse. However, because the act of pushing a button is far less dramatic and visually arresting than swinging a billy club, it can come across as much more humane to the general public. This, of course, draws much less media coverage and, thus, less bad public relations for the police.