2011-08-06 "Teen struck by Ohio campus officer's stun gun dies" from "Associated Press" newswire
Cincinnati was struck by a campus officer's stun gun and died of cardiac arrest.
Officers received a 911 call about an assault at Turner Hall early Saturday. The university's assistant police chief, Jeff Corcoran, tells The Cincinnati Enquirer (http://bit.ly/q3FIuz ) that the teenage boy approached officers in the dorm hallway, appearing agitated and angry.
Corcoran says officers ordered the teen to back off, but he refused. He was then hit once by an officer's stun gun.
Afterward, the teen appeared incoherent. He went into cardiac arrest after paramedics arrived and was pronounced dead at University Hospital.
The department has suspended the use of stun guns until his cause of death is determined. Authorities are also investigating the original 911 call.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
2011-08-04 "Without Police Accountability There Is No Justice" by Mike Rhodes ( editor [at] fresnoalliance.com ) from "Fresno Alliance" newspaper
[http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/08/24/18688595.php]
To find out more about the Central California Criminal Justice Committee and what it is doing to ensure civilian control over the police department, visit [http://cccjc.org].
---
Photo below: Carrie and Victor Gonzales say excessive force was used by the Fresno Police Department when they arrested Victor for a parole violation.
Carrie Gonzales wants to know why her husband Victor, who she says was on the ground with his hands over his head, was viciously attacked by a police dog this summer. She is angry that police officers were later heard laughing and said, “Yeah, did you see how bad the dog got him.” Victor Gonzales, who was badly mauled, did not die, but he did have serious head and body injuries caused by the incident.
Carrie called the Community Alliance because of an article in the July issue about Angelo Fernandez, who was shot in the back by a Fresno police officer. Fernandez was unarmed.
Carrie said her husband was in a house when police officers came to the door. “They came into the front of the house and, of course, he was afraid of being arrested due to things that happened to him when he had been arrested before. He ran out the back, but the police already had the whole house surrounded. This was on the evening of July 20. He jumped the fence, and officers ordered him to get down on the ground or they would release the dogs.”
According to Carrie, her husband complied with the officers, laying on the ground and putting his arms over his head and spreading his legs. The police report that the Community Alliance obtained through a California Public Records Act request says that the officers “observed suspect Victor Gonzales jump over the north fence of the backyard of the primary location.” The police say they ordered him to stop but that he continued moving and that is when they released the dog.
“The dog mangled his head, dragged him several feet by his neck, which created a hematoma. If that clot gets loose and goes to his heart or brain he will die,” Carrie said. “He was trying to protect himself, he was holding his head and the dog mangled both of his thumbs. One of his thumbs was almost severed. The dog also got his chest/arm area where he has stitches and his torso where he has stitches.
“I believe there was no reason for them to sic the dog on him. If he was resisting arrest, if he was running, the dog would not have been able to attack his head and his neck. He would have sustained injuries to his legs from them taking him down.”
The police report refers to a document written by the dog handler about this incident, but that report was not made available to the Community Alliance, even after multiple requests. Carrie said she found out about the incident the next day, when she was told that Victor was in Community Hospital and was not expected to survive.
Following two recent front-page stories in the Community Alliance—one about Angelo Fernandez and the other about the police department’s towing of cars—we have been deluged with reports of police misconduct, excessive force and unnecessary fatalities.
The case of David Buchenberger raises serious questions about the Fresno Police Department’s practice of who is arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) and which cars get towed. Buchenberger was at home and in bed when the police entered his house and arrested him for DUI. Buchenberger’s car, which he says was legally parked on the street, was towed.
Buchenberger explains how this happened. “I got arrested for drunk driving on October 2 [2010]. I was taking a medication to quit smoking. I woke up in jail and got out and my car had been impounded. I had been arrested in my bedroom; I got pulled out of bed to get arrested.”
Buchenberger said the officer entered his home without a warrant. The police report did not mention a warrant but says that a man identified as Buchenberger’s father answered the door when the police arrived and called for his son to come downstairs to talk to the officer. Buchenberger says that his father did not give the officer permission to enter their home. “My dad said they just walked around him, went up the stairs and pulled me out of bed.”
The police report makes no mention of an officer seeing Buchenberger driving while under the influence of alcohol. Both Buchenberger and the police agree that someone saw him driving, made a complaint and an officer was sent to investigate. Sometime after Buchenberger arrived home and went to bed, the officer arrived and arrested him. The amount of time Buchenberger was sleeping is in dispute, but nobody is saying that the officer was in “hot pursuit” of the suspect.
Buchenberger thinks that all charges against him should be dropped, and he does not understand why his car was towed. He asked the police, “Why did you tow my car? It was parked legally and properly in front of my home.” After reading the Community Alliance, he said, “I found out that there is a $40 fee given to the cops for referring the business (to the tow truck company), plus the impound fees. It cost me $500 to get my car out.”
Adrian Perez also contacted the Community Alliance newspaper, saying that he had been beaten up and abused by the police. It is always difficult to reconcile accounts of what the police say happened with what is reported to us, but in this case the incident might have happened on two different planets. One thing that would have helped shed some light on what happened is to have a video of the incident. Perez said he asked his girlfriend to film the incident as it took place but that she was threatened with arrest if she turned the camera on.
What Perez wanted her to video was how a traffic stop for an alleged unsafe lane change ended up with him being slammed head first to the asphalt. According to Perez, after the officers prevented his girlfriend from filming the incident an officer “put handcuffs on me, he picked me up off the ground and immediately after that he slammed me with all of his force back onto the asphalt. He tried to slam me on my face, but I was able to catch the fall with my left shoulder, which was seriously injured.”
Perez says what led up to this violent assault happened after he had been pulled over on East Tulare Avenue near 6th Street and officers asked if he was high on drugs. He thinks racial profiling had something to do with the stop, but the police report said officers saw his eyelid twitch, which they believed was a sign of drug use. Perez admits that he was angered by being accused of being on drugs but can’t understand how the incident escalated so quickly.
After he was arrested and his car towed, Perez was processed into the Fresno County Jail. When his handcuffs were removed he became aware of how seriously his left arm was injured and asked to be taken to the hospital.
Perez said that “the officer tried to convince me that it would be a lot faster to go to jail and that I could get medical treatment after I was released. He was trying to get me to go to the jail because he didn’t want them [the hospital] to know what they had done to me. As soon as I told them no, that I really wanted to go to the doctor, he wrote me a citation and told me to get the f**k out of there before they arrest me for trespassing on police property.”
As disturbing as these reports are, we have received even more troubling stories, like the one about how Raul Rosas was killed after being arrested by Sheriff’s deputies. Rosas was involved in a domestic dispute in early June. When the deputies arrived, he jumped over the back fence and ran into a neighbor’s house. The deputies went into the house, there was an altercation and Rosas was brought out in handcuffs.
Witnesses said Rosas asked for water, but the deputies stopped a neighbor from handing him a glass. Rosas went into cardiac arrest and was taken to Community Hospital, where he was on life support until he died. Family and friends believe he was Tasered numerous times inside the house. The Sheriff’s Department would not release a report, as requested by the Community Alliance under the California Public Records Act.
Ellie Bluestein, who is a past chairperson of the Central California Criminal Justice Committee, says that incidents like these “have been going on for the 10 years we have been organizing.” She says that “there has never been a place where a person can call and say ‘look this happened to me, I need help.’”
Adrian Perez did go to the District Attorney’s Office and tried to file a complaint about the assault he suffered but was told to go away. Bluestein, expressing some frustration, said that “the only place they can go is to file a written complaint and it is taken up by the police Internal Affairs. They monitor themselves.” She says “very few people have ever had a complaint sustained.”
Bluestein said that Eddie Aubrey, the former director of the Office of Independent Review (OIR), had made improving the complaint procedure one of his major goals. She believes that his recommendations for an improved complaint process were in a report he submitted shortly before he was fired. That report has never been released, and there are no plans to hire a new director for the OIR.
Bluestein said that “a year ago in February the District Attorney[’s Office] announced that they would no longer investigate police shootings. Now we have no police oversight, no outside complaint procedure where somebody can call up and get an independent assessment of what had happened, no investigation of police shootings, and we don’t even have a Human Relations Commission, which we had at one time. There is nothing, nothing. Fresno is really a city with no recourse for its citizens. It must be the only city in California that exists like this, because everywhere else, at least the DA’s office investigates police shootings.”
Human rights activists like Bluestein point out that while there is no independent office to investigate allegations of police misconduct and officer-involved shootings, many people use the court system in their search for justice. But Bluestein wants to see a new, more powerful, OIR established.
“This time, if we get an Office of Independent Review we need to get someone who can also do the investigation, subpoena witnesses and do the things that really need to be done,” Bluestein said. The original OIR “was just a compromise, we agreed to it, but we need more than that.”
[http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/08/24/18688595.php]
To find out more about the Central California Criminal Justice Committee and what it is doing to ensure civilian control over the police department, visit [http://cccjc.org].
---
Photo below: Carrie and Victor Gonzales say excessive force was used by the Fresno Police Department when they arrested Victor for a parole violation.
Carrie Gonzales wants to know why her husband Victor, who she says was on the ground with his hands over his head, was viciously attacked by a police dog this summer. She is angry that police officers were later heard laughing and said, “Yeah, did you see how bad the dog got him.” Victor Gonzales, who was badly mauled, did not die, but he did have serious head and body injuries caused by the incident.
Carrie called the Community Alliance because of an article in the July issue about Angelo Fernandez, who was shot in the back by a Fresno police officer. Fernandez was unarmed.
Carrie said her husband was in a house when police officers came to the door. “They came into the front of the house and, of course, he was afraid of being arrested due to things that happened to him when he had been arrested before. He ran out the back, but the police already had the whole house surrounded. This was on the evening of July 20. He jumped the fence, and officers ordered him to get down on the ground or they would release the dogs.”
According to Carrie, her husband complied with the officers, laying on the ground and putting his arms over his head and spreading his legs. The police report that the Community Alliance obtained through a California Public Records Act request says that the officers “observed suspect Victor Gonzales jump over the north fence of the backyard of the primary location.” The police say they ordered him to stop but that he continued moving and that is when they released the dog.
“The dog mangled his head, dragged him several feet by his neck, which created a hematoma. If that clot gets loose and goes to his heart or brain he will die,” Carrie said. “He was trying to protect himself, he was holding his head and the dog mangled both of his thumbs. One of his thumbs was almost severed. The dog also got his chest/arm area where he has stitches and his torso where he has stitches.
“I believe there was no reason for them to sic the dog on him. If he was resisting arrest, if he was running, the dog would not have been able to attack his head and his neck. He would have sustained injuries to his legs from them taking him down.”
The police report refers to a document written by the dog handler about this incident, but that report was not made available to the Community Alliance, even after multiple requests. Carrie said she found out about the incident the next day, when she was told that Victor was in Community Hospital and was not expected to survive.
Following two recent front-page stories in the Community Alliance—one about Angelo Fernandez and the other about the police department’s towing of cars—we have been deluged with reports of police misconduct, excessive force and unnecessary fatalities.
The case of David Buchenberger raises serious questions about the Fresno Police Department’s practice of who is arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) and which cars get towed. Buchenberger was at home and in bed when the police entered his house and arrested him for DUI. Buchenberger’s car, which he says was legally parked on the street, was towed.
Buchenberger explains how this happened. “I got arrested for drunk driving on October 2 [2010]. I was taking a medication to quit smoking. I woke up in jail and got out and my car had been impounded. I had been arrested in my bedroom; I got pulled out of bed to get arrested.”
Buchenberger said the officer entered his home without a warrant. The police report did not mention a warrant but says that a man identified as Buchenberger’s father answered the door when the police arrived and called for his son to come downstairs to talk to the officer. Buchenberger says that his father did not give the officer permission to enter their home. “My dad said they just walked around him, went up the stairs and pulled me out of bed.”
The police report makes no mention of an officer seeing Buchenberger driving while under the influence of alcohol. Both Buchenberger and the police agree that someone saw him driving, made a complaint and an officer was sent to investigate. Sometime after Buchenberger arrived home and went to bed, the officer arrived and arrested him. The amount of time Buchenberger was sleeping is in dispute, but nobody is saying that the officer was in “hot pursuit” of the suspect.
Buchenberger thinks that all charges against him should be dropped, and he does not understand why his car was towed. He asked the police, “Why did you tow my car? It was parked legally and properly in front of my home.” After reading the Community Alliance, he said, “I found out that there is a $40 fee given to the cops for referring the business (to the tow truck company), plus the impound fees. It cost me $500 to get my car out.”
Adrian Perez also contacted the Community Alliance newspaper, saying that he had been beaten up and abused by the police. It is always difficult to reconcile accounts of what the police say happened with what is reported to us, but in this case the incident might have happened on two different planets. One thing that would have helped shed some light on what happened is to have a video of the incident. Perez said he asked his girlfriend to film the incident as it took place but that she was threatened with arrest if she turned the camera on.
What Perez wanted her to video was how a traffic stop for an alleged unsafe lane change ended up with him being slammed head first to the asphalt. According to Perez, after the officers prevented his girlfriend from filming the incident an officer “put handcuffs on me, he picked me up off the ground and immediately after that he slammed me with all of his force back onto the asphalt. He tried to slam me on my face, but I was able to catch the fall with my left shoulder, which was seriously injured.”
Perez says what led up to this violent assault happened after he had been pulled over on East Tulare Avenue near 6th Street and officers asked if he was high on drugs. He thinks racial profiling had something to do with the stop, but the police report said officers saw his eyelid twitch, which they believed was a sign of drug use. Perez admits that he was angered by being accused of being on drugs but can’t understand how the incident escalated so quickly.
After he was arrested and his car towed, Perez was processed into the Fresno County Jail. When his handcuffs were removed he became aware of how seriously his left arm was injured and asked to be taken to the hospital.
Perez said that “the officer tried to convince me that it would be a lot faster to go to jail and that I could get medical treatment after I was released. He was trying to get me to go to the jail because he didn’t want them [the hospital] to know what they had done to me. As soon as I told them no, that I really wanted to go to the doctor, he wrote me a citation and told me to get the f**k out of there before they arrest me for trespassing on police property.”
As disturbing as these reports are, we have received even more troubling stories, like the one about how Raul Rosas was killed after being arrested by Sheriff’s deputies. Rosas was involved in a domestic dispute in early June. When the deputies arrived, he jumped over the back fence and ran into a neighbor’s house. The deputies went into the house, there was an altercation and Rosas was brought out in handcuffs.
Witnesses said Rosas asked for water, but the deputies stopped a neighbor from handing him a glass. Rosas went into cardiac arrest and was taken to Community Hospital, where he was on life support until he died. Family and friends believe he was Tasered numerous times inside the house. The Sheriff’s Department would not release a report, as requested by the Community Alliance under the California Public Records Act.
Ellie Bluestein, who is a past chairperson of the Central California Criminal Justice Committee, says that incidents like these “have been going on for the 10 years we have been organizing.” She says that “there has never been a place where a person can call and say ‘look this happened to me, I need help.’”
Adrian Perez did go to the District Attorney’s Office and tried to file a complaint about the assault he suffered but was told to go away. Bluestein, expressing some frustration, said that “the only place they can go is to file a written complaint and it is taken up by the police Internal Affairs. They monitor themselves.” She says “very few people have ever had a complaint sustained.”
Bluestein said that Eddie Aubrey, the former director of the Office of Independent Review (OIR), had made improving the complaint procedure one of his major goals. She believes that his recommendations for an improved complaint process were in a report he submitted shortly before he was fired. That report has never been released, and there are no plans to hire a new director for the OIR.
Bluestein said that “a year ago in February the District Attorney[’s Office] announced that they would no longer investigate police shootings. Now we have no police oversight, no outside complaint procedure where somebody can call up and get an independent assessment of what had happened, no investigation of police shootings, and we don’t even have a Human Relations Commission, which we had at one time. There is nothing, nothing. Fresno is really a city with no recourse for its citizens. It must be the only city in California that exists like this, because everywhere else, at least the DA’s office investigates police shootings.”
Human rights activists like Bluestein point out that while there is no independent office to investigate allegations of police misconduct and officer-involved shootings, many people use the court system in their search for justice. But Bluestein wants to see a new, more powerful, OIR established.
“This time, if we get an Office of Independent Review we need to get someone who can also do the investigation, subpoena witnesses and do the things that really need to be done,” Bluestein said. The original OIR “was just a compromise, we agreed to it, but we need more than that.”
Monday, August 1, 2011
2011-08-01 "6 Creepy New Weapons the Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People: From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control" by Rania Khalek
[http://www.alternet.org/world/151864/6_creepy_new_weapons_the_police_and_military_use_to_subdue_unarmed_people/?page=entire]
Rania Khalek is a progressive activist. Check out her blog Missing Pieces [http://raniakhalek.com/] or follow her on Twitter @Rania_ak. Contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
---
The US is at the forefront of an international arms development effort that includes a remarkable assortment of technologies, which look and sound like they belong in a Hollywood science fiction thriller. From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams, to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control.
The Pentagon's approved term for these weapons is "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" and they are intended for use against the unarmed. Designed to control crowds, clear streets, subdue and restrain individuals and secure borders, they are the 21st century's version of the police baton, pepper spray and tear gas. As journalist Ando Arike puts it [http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082866], "The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population."
The demand for non-lethal weapons (NLW) is rooted in the rise of television. In the 1960s and '70s the medium let everyday Americans witness the violent tactics used to suppress the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Today’s rapid advancements in media and telecommunications technologies allow people to record and publicize images and video of undue force more than ever before. Authorities are well aware of how images of violence play out publicly. In 1997, a joint report from the Pentagon and the Justice Department warned [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/164268.pdf]:
"A further consideration that affects how the military and law enforcement apply force is the greater presence of members of the media or other civilians who are observing, if not recording, the situation. Even the lawful application of force can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public. More than ever, the police and the military must be highly discreet when applying force."
The global economic collapse coupled with the unpredictable and increasingly catastrophic consequences of climate change and resource scarcity, along with a new era of austerity defined by rising unemployment and glaring inequality have already led to massive protests in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and even Madison, Wisconsin. From the progressive era to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, Americans have a rich history of taking to the streets to demand greater equality.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars have been invested in the research and development of more media-friendly weapons for everyday policing and crowd control. This has lead to a trade-in of old school weapons for more exotic and controversial technologies. The following are six of the most outrageous "non-lethal" weapons that will define the future of crowd control.
1. The Invisible Pain Ray: The 'Holy Grail of Crowd Control' -
Photo source: Pasadena Star News
It sounds like a weapon out of Star Wars. The Active Denial System, or ADS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System], works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets to 130 degrees. This creates an intolerable burning sensation forcing those in its path to instinctively flee (a response the Air Force dubs the "goodbye effect" [http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72134?currentPage=2]).
The Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) says [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/ads.html], "This capability will add to the ability to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary, providing an alternative to lethal force." Although ADS is described as non-lethal, a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann suggests otherwise [http://www.bundesstiftung-friedensforschung.de/pdf-docs/berichtaltmann2.pdf]:
" ... the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening – due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection – and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. "
The weapon was initially tested in Afghanistan [http://www.aolnews.com/2010/06/17/us-may-unleash-microwave-weapon-in-afghanistan/], but later recalled due to a combination of technical difficulties and political concerns [http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/18/raytheons-pain-gun-finally-gets-deployed-in-afghanistan/], including the fear that ADS would be used as a torture tool [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/08/no-pain-ray-for/] making it "not politically tenable," according to a Defense Science Board report [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/08/weve-heard-it-o/]. The tens of millions of dollars spent to develop the ADS did not necessarily go to waste, however.
While the weapon may be too controversial for use on the battlefield, it appears that nothing is too sadistic for use on US prisoners, so the ADS has since been modified into a smaller version by Raytheon, for use in law enforcement. Last year, the renamed Assault Intervention System (AIS) was installed [http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_15844824] at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correction Facility at the behest of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD). Former LASD Commander, Charles “Sid” Heal had been lobbying for the pain ray for years [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003896377_gadgets22.html], calling it the "Holy Grail of Crowd Control," due to its ability to make people scatter almost instantly [http://raniakhalek.wordpress.com/wp-admin/Holy%20Grail%20of%20crowd%20control].
The device is operated by a jail officer with a joystick [http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/24/l-a-jail-tests-intolerable-heat-beam-on-brawling-inmates/], and is intended to break up prison riots, inmate brawls and prevent assaults on officers. Sheriff Lee Baca added that it would allow officers to quickly intervene without having to physically enter the area to incapacitate prisoners [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-31/justice/california.heat.ray_1_county-jail-inmates-fights-baca-last-week?_s=PM:CRIME].
The ACLU claims [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/08/26/aclu-protests-torture-prisoners-pain-ray/] that use of such a device on American prisoners is "tantamount to torture." The organization even sent a letter to the sheriff in charge [http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Letter_to_Baca_8.26.10.pdf], demanding he never use the energy weapon against inmates. “The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project [http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/aclu-calls-los-angeles-county-sheriff-s-officials-abandon-plans-use-military-heat-r]. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people’s lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The pain ray’s use in the Pitchess Detention Center is a pilot program. If successful, the weapon could find its way into other prisons around the country. The National Institute of Justice has also expressed interest in a hand-held, rifle-sized, short-range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials [http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/12/pain_beam].
2. The Laser Blinding 'Dazzler' -
Photo source: Air Force Fact Sheet
The Personal Halting and Stimulation Response rifle, or PHaSR [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/best-military-prototypes/?pid=99], is a massive laser shooter. PHaSR technology is being co-funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. While JNLWP is interested in the technology for military applications, NIJ is focusing on its law enforcement use.
So what is the purpose of this light-shooting toy? Well, it won't kill you, but it will temporarily blind you — or as the NIJ prefers to say, it will "dazzle" you into disorientation — by shooting you with two low-power diode-pumped lasers.
Protocol IV, the Blinding Laser Protocol of the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, states that [http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule86], "The use of laser weapons that are specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision is prohibited."
After the US agreed to the Blinding Laser Protocol in 1995 under President Clinton, the Pentagon was forced to cancel several blinding laser weapon programs that were in the works. But the PHaSR rifle can skirt this regulation because the blinding effect is apparently temporary due to its low-intensity laser.
According to a U.S. Air Force fact sheet [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/misc/fact_sheets/PHaSR%20fact%20sheet_v2%20from%20Kirtland%2030%20June%2006%20-%20FINAL.pdf], "The laser light from PHaSR temporarily impairs aggressors by dazzling them with one wavelength. The second wavelength causes a repel effect that discourages advancing aggressors.” The JNLWP website says that a significant amount of research and experimentation is still required to gain a full understanding of the safety, military effectiveness, and limitations of these future capabilities [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/future_capabilities/lip.html].
3. The Taser on Steroids -
Photo source: Taser website
The Albuquerque Police Department now has Taser shotguns in its arsenal [http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/apd-gets-taser-shotguns-]. Most of us are familiar with hand-held Tasers and understand that they only work if the police are standing pretty close to you (about 20 feet).
But Taser has developed the Taser X12, a 12-gauge shotgun that instead of firing lethal bullet rounds, is designed to fire Taser projectile rounds. Known as Extended Range Electronic Projectiles (XREP) [http://taser.com/products/military/taser-xrep], the XREP cartridge is a self-contained, wireless projectile that delivers the same neuro-muscular incapacitation bio-effect (a fancy way of saying electric shock) as the handheld Taser, but up to 100 feet.
According to a July 21 press release [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/taser-and-metal-storm-sign-mou-2011-07-21?reflink=MW_news_stmp], Taser International has taken the XREP to the next level, teaming up with the Australian electronic gun company Metal Storm to enhance the 12-gauge Multi-Shot Accessory Under-Barrel Launcher (MAUL) [http://www.metalstorm.com/content/view/83/167/].
The two companies will combine Metal Storm's MAUL stacked projectile technology to "provide semi-automatic fire as fast as the operator can squeeze the trigger," which boasts a full weapon reload of up to five rounds in less than two seconds. Picture five rounds of Taser XREP cartridges flying out in less than two seconds up to 30 yards away -- that is the plan.
In September 2010 Raw Story reported [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/05/taser-related-deaths-accelerating/] that the rate of Taser-related deaths were on the rise. The story cited an Amnesty International report from 2008 that found 351 Taser-related deaths in the US between June 2001 and August 2008, a rate of just slightly above four deaths per month. About 90 percent of the victims were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat, according to an article in the Boston Review [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.1/nevins.php]. The Amnesty report points out that Tasers are “inherently open to abuse as they are easy to carry and easy to use and they can inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks.“ In Amnesty's US 2010 report, the Taser-related death toll had increased to 390 [http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-usa-2010?page=3]. If the MAUL-Taser combined shooter find its way into police departments around the country, it may not bode well for the rate of Taser-related deaths.
Another project of Taser International, which was unveiled in 2009, is the Shockwave Area-Denial System [http://taser.com/products/law-enforcement/taser-shockwave-ecd], which blankets a large area with electrified darts, and a wireless Taser projectile with a 100-meter range, helpful for picking off “ringleaders” in unruly crowds. In 2007, Taser's French distributor announced plans for a stun-gun-equipped flying saucer that fires stun darts at criminal suspects or rioters [http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_qln4UXVmKbqgq42Tcis4BRjxuw]; however, it has yet to be unveiled. Clearly there is no limit to Taser International’s capacity for creativity.
4. Calmative Agents for Riot Control -
Calmatives are chemical or biological agents with sedative, sleep-inducing or similar psychoactive effects. Although the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of riot control agents in warfare, JNWLP and NIJ have long considered [http://www.ncstl.org/news/July07DaggettPharmacological%20Overview%20of%20Calmatives] calmatives for both military and law enforcement applications, such as dispersing a crowd, controlling a riot or calming a noncompliant offender.
The most well-known and widely used riot-control agents are tear gas (CS) and chloroacetophenone (CN), also known as mace. A few ways that more advanced non-lethal calmatives might be administered [http://www.ncstl.org/news/July07DaggettPharmacological%20Overview%20of%20Calmatives], depending on the law enforcement environment, would include a topical or transdermal skin application, an aerosol spray, an intramuscular dart, or a rubber bullet filled with an inhalable agent.
In the March 2010 issue of Harper's magazine, Ando Arike gives an extensive overview of riot control technology in his article "The Soft Kill: New Frontiers in Pain Compliance." He wrote [http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082866]:
[begin excerpt]
Pentagon interest in “advanced riot-control agents” has long been an open secret, but just how close we are to seeing these agents in action was revealed in 2002, when the Sunshine Project, an arms-control group based in Austin, Texas, posted on the Internet a trove of Pentagon documents uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act. Among these was a fifty-page study titled “The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique,” conducted by Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, home of the JNLWD-sponsored Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.
Penn State’s College of Medicine researchers agreed, contrary to accepted principles of medical ethics, that “the development and use of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable,” and identified a large number of promising drug candidates, including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and carfentanyl, the last commonly used by veterinarians to sedate large animals. The only problems they saw were in developing effective delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.
Little more was heard about the Pentagon’s “advanced riot-control agent” program until July 2008, when the Army announced that production was scheduled for its XM1063 “non-lethal personal suppression projectile,” an artillery shell that bursts in midair over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-square-foot area, each dispersing a chemical agent as it parachutes down. There are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the intended payload—a literal opiate of the masses.
[end excerpt]
5. Screaming Microwaves That Pierce the Skull -
Photo source: Wired
Researchers are in the process of developing the Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio or MEDUSA (that's right, from Greek mythology) [http://www.navysbirprogram.com/NavySearch/Summary/summary.aspx?pk=F5B07D68-1B19-4235-B140-950CE2E19D08], which uses a beam of microwaves to induce uncomfortable auditory sensations in the skull. The device exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html]. MEDUSA’s audio effect is loud enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. It may also cause a little brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/07/the-microwave-s/].
MEDUSA's intended purpose is deterring crowds from entering a protected perimeter, like a nuclear site, and temporarily incapacitating unruly individuals. So far the weapon remains in development and is funded by the Navy.
6. Ear-Splitting Siren -
Photo source: Associated Press
The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/05/outside_at_the_/], built by American Technology Corporation, focuses and broadcasts sound over ranges of up to hundreds of yards. LRAD has been around for years, but Americans first took notice when police used it in Pittsburgh to ward off protesters at the 2009 G-20 summit [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/24/g20-pittsburgh-protest-police]. It is generally used in two ways [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/sonic-warfare-erupts-in-pittsburgh-honduras/]: as a megaphone to order protesters to disperse; or, if they disobey, as an “ear-splitting siren” to drive them away. While LRAD may not be deadly, it can permanently damage hearing, depending on how it’s used [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/sonic-blaster-deployed-to-local-political-events-beach-competition/].
Similar sonic blasters have proven deadly. One is the Thunder Generator, an Israeli-developed shock wave cannon used by farmers to scare away crop-threatening bird. According to a Defense News report last year, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has licensed a firm called ArmyTec to market the Thunder Generator for military and security applications [http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4447499&c=FEA&s=TEC].
It works using gas from a cylinder of domestic liquid petroleum, which is mixed with air and then detonated, producing a series of high-intensity blasts. Patented “pulse detonation” technology ensures high-decibel blasts. With an effective range of up to 50 meters, the makers say it is extremely loud but will not do any lasting damage. They warn, however, that within 10 meters the Thunder Generator could cause permanent damage or even death [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/a-sonic-blaster-so-loud-it-could-be-deadly/#more-21519].
The Impact -
The application of pain to control or coerce people into submission helps achieve the desired aims of perception management, while sheltering the public from the brutality of such devices.
Perhaps these less-lethal tactics for crowd control do result in fewer injuries. But they also severely weaken our capacity to enact political change. Authorities have ever more creative ways to manage dissent, at a time when the need for change by popular demand is vital to the future of our society and the planet.
[http://www.alternet.org/world/151864/6_creepy_new_weapons_the_police_and_military_use_to_subdue_unarmed_people/?page=entire]
Rania Khalek is a progressive activist. Check out her blog Missing Pieces [http://raniakhalek.com/] or follow her on Twitter @Rania_ak. Contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
---
The US is at the forefront of an international arms development effort that includes a remarkable assortment of technologies, which look and sound like they belong in a Hollywood science fiction thriller. From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams, to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control.
The Pentagon's approved term for these weapons is "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" and they are intended for use against the unarmed. Designed to control crowds, clear streets, subdue and restrain individuals and secure borders, they are the 21st century's version of the police baton, pepper spray and tear gas. As journalist Ando Arike puts it [http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082866], "The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population."
The demand for non-lethal weapons (NLW) is rooted in the rise of television. In the 1960s and '70s the medium let everyday Americans witness the violent tactics used to suppress the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Today’s rapid advancements in media and telecommunications technologies allow people to record and publicize images and video of undue force more than ever before. Authorities are well aware of how images of violence play out publicly. In 1997, a joint report from the Pentagon and the Justice Department warned [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/164268.pdf]:
"A further consideration that affects how the military and law enforcement apply force is the greater presence of members of the media or other civilians who are observing, if not recording, the situation. Even the lawful application of force can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public. More than ever, the police and the military must be highly discreet when applying force."
The global economic collapse coupled with the unpredictable and increasingly catastrophic consequences of climate change and resource scarcity, along with a new era of austerity defined by rising unemployment and glaring inequality have already led to massive protests in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and even Madison, Wisconsin. From the progressive era to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, Americans have a rich history of taking to the streets to demand greater equality.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars have been invested in the research and development of more media-friendly weapons for everyday policing and crowd control. This has lead to a trade-in of old school weapons for more exotic and controversial technologies. The following are six of the most outrageous "non-lethal" weapons that will define the future of crowd control.
1. The Invisible Pain Ray: The 'Holy Grail of Crowd Control' -
Photo source: Pasadena Star News
It sounds like a weapon out of Star Wars. The Active Denial System, or ADS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System], works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets to 130 degrees. This creates an intolerable burning sensation forcing those in its path to instinctively flee (a response the Air Force dubs the "goodbye effect" [http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72134?currentPage=2]).The Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) says [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/ads.html], "This capability will add to the ability to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary, providing an alternative to lethal force." Although ADS is described as non-lethal, a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann suggests otherwise [http://www.bundesstiftung-friedensforschung.de/pdf-docs/berichtaltmann2.pdf]:
" ... the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening – due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection – and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. "
The weapon was initially tested in Afghanistan [http://www.aolnews.com/2010/06/17/us-may-unleash-microwave-weapon-in-afghanistan/], but later recalled due to a combination of technical difficulties and political concerns [http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/18/raytheons-pain-gun-finally-gets-deployed-in-afghanistan/], including the fear that ADS would be used as a torture tool [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/08/no-pain-ray-for/] making it "not politically tenable," according to a Defense Science Board report [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/08/weve-heard-it-o/]. The tens of millions of dollars spent to develop the ADS did not necessarily go to waste, however.
While the weapon may be too controversial for use on the battlefield, it appears that nothing is too sadistic for use on US prisoners, so the ADS has since been modified into a smaller version by Raytheon, for use in law enforcement. Last year, the renamed Assault Intervention System (AIS) was installed [http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_15844824] at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correction Facility at the behest of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD). Former LASD Commander, Charles “Sid” Heal had been lobbying for the pain ray for years [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003896377_gadgets22.html], calling it the "Holy Grail of Crowd Control," due to its ability to make people scatter almost instantly [http://raniakhalek.wordpress.com/wp-admin/Holy%20Grail%20of%20crowd%20control].
The device is operated by a jail officer with a joystick [http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/24/l-a-jail-tests-intolerable-heat-beam-on-brawling-inmates/], and is intended to break up prison riots, inmate brawls and prevent assaults on officers. Sheriff Lee Baca added that it would allow officers to quickly intervene without having to physically enter the area to incapacitate prisoners [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-31/justice/california.heat.ray_1_county-jail-inmates-fights-baca-last-week?_s=PM:CRIME].
The ACLU claims [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/08/26/aclu-protests-torture-prisoners-pain-ray/] that use of such a device on American prisoners is "tantamount to torture." The organization even sent a letter to the sheriff in charge [http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Letter_to_Baca_8.26.10.pdf], demanding he never use the energy weapon against inmates. “The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project [http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/aclu-calls-los-angeles-county-sheriff-s-officials-abandon-plans-use-military-heat-r]. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people’s lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The pain ray’s use in the Pitchess Detention Center is a pilot program. If successful, the weapon could find its way into other prisons around the country. The National Institute of Justice has also expressed interest in a hand-held, rifle-sized, short-range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials [http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/12/pain_beam].
2. The Laser Blinding 'Dazzler' -
Photo source: Air Force Fact Sheet
The Personal Halting and Stimulation Response rifle, or PHaSR [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/best-military-prototypes/?pid=99], is a massive laser shooter. PHaSR technology is being co-funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. While JNLWP is interested in the technology for military applications, NIJ is focusing on its law enforcement use.So what is the purpose of this light-shooting toy? Well, it won't kill you, but it will temporarily blind you — or as the NIJ prefers to say, it will "dazzle" you into disorientation — by shooting you with two low-power diode-pumped lasers.
Protocol IV, the Blinding Laser Protocol of the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, states that [http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule86], "The use of laser weapons that are specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision is prohibited."
After the US agreed to the Blinding Laser Protocol in 1995 under President Clinton, the Pentagon was forced to cancel several blinding laser weapon programs that were in the works. But the PHaSR rifle can skirt this regulation because the blinding effect is apparently temporary due to its low-intensity laser.
According to a U.S. Air Force fact sheet [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/misc/fact_sheets/PHaSR%20fact%20sheet_v2%20from%20Kirtland%2030%20June%2006%20-%20FINAL.pdf], "The laser light from PHaSR temporarily impairs aggressors by dazzling them with one wavelength. The second wavelength causes a repel effect that discourages advancing aggressors.” The JNLWP website says that a significant amount of research and experimentation is still required to gain a full understanding of the safety, military effectiveness, and limitations of these future capabilities [http://jnlwp.defense.gov/future_capabilities/lip.html].
3. The Taser on Steroids -
Photo source: Taser website
The Albuquerque Police Department now has Taser shotguns in its arsenal [http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/apd-gets-taser-shotguns-]. Most of us are familiar with hand-held Tasers and understand that they only work if the police are standing pretty close to you (about 20 feet).But Taser has developed the Taser X12, a 12-gauge shotgun that instead of firing lethal bullet rounds, is designed to fire Taser projectile rounds. Known as Extended Range Electronic Projectiles (XREP) [http://taser.com/products/military/taser-xrep], the XREP cartridge is a self-contained, wireless projectile that delivers the same neuro-muscular incapacitation bio-effect (a fancy way of saying electric shock) as the handheld Taser, but up to 100 feet.
According to a July 21 press release [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/taser-and-metal-storm-sign-mou-2011-07-21?reflink=MW_news_stmp], Taser International has taken the XREP to the next level, teaming up with the Australian electronic gun company Metal Storm to enhance the 12-gauge Multi-Shot Accessory Under-Barrel Launcher (MAUL) [http://www.metalstorm.com/content/view/83/167/].
The two companies will combine Metal Storm's MAUL stacked projectile technology to "provide semi-automatic fire as fast as the operator can squeeze the trigger," which boasts a full weapon reload of up to five rounds in less than two seconds. Picture five rounds of Taser XREP cartridges flying out in less than two seconds up to 30 yards away -- that is the plan.
In September 2010 Raw Story reported [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/05/taser-related-deaths-accelerating/] that the rate of Taser-related deaths were on the rise. The story cited an Amnesty International report from 2008 that found 351 Taser-related deaths in the US between June 2001 and August 2008, a rate of just slightly above four deaths per month. About 90 percent of the victims were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat, according to an article in the Boston Review [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.1/nevins.php]. The Amnesty report points out that Tasers are “inherently open to abuse as they are easy to carry and easy to use and they can inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks.“ In Amnesty's US 2010 report, the Taser-related death toll had increased to 390 [http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-usa-2010?page=3]. If the MAUL-Taser combined shooter find its way into police departments around the country, it may not bode well for the rate of Taser-related deaths.
Another project of Taser International, which was unveiled in 2009, is the Shockwave Area-Denial System [http://taser.com/products/law-enforcement/taser-shockwave-ecd], which blankets a large area with electrified darts, and a wireless Taser projectile with a 100-meter range, helpful for picking off “ringleaders” in unruly crowds. In 2007, Taser's French distributor announced plans for a stun-gun-equipped flying saucer that fires stun darts at criminal suspects or rioters [http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_qln4UXVmKbqgq42Tcis4BRjxuw]; however, it has yet to be unveiled. Clearly there is no limit to Taser International’s capacity for creativity.
4. Calmative Agents for Riot Control -
Calmatives are chemical or biological agents with sedative, sleep-inducing or similar psychoactive effects. Although the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of riot control agents in warfare, JNWLP and NIJ have long considered [http://www.ncstl.org/news/July07DaggettPharmacological%20Overview%20of%20Calmatives] calmatives for both military and law enforcement applications, such as dispersing a crowd, controlling a riot or calming a noncompliant offender.
The most well-known and widely used riot-control agents are tear gas (CS) and chloroacetophenone (CN), also known as mace. A few ways that more advanced non-lethal calmatives might be administered [http://www.ncstl.org/news/July07DaggettPharmacological%20Overview%20of%20Calmatives], depending on the law enforcement environment, would include a topical or transdermal skin application, an aerosol spray, an intramuscular dart, or a rubber bullet filled with an inhalable agent.
In the March 2010 issue of Harper's magazine, Ando Arike gives an extensive overview of riot control technology in his article "The Soft Kill: New Frontiers in Pain Compliance." He wrote [http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082866]:
[begin excerpt]
Pentagon interest in “advanced riot-control agents” has long been an open secret, but just how close we are to seeing these agents in action was revealed in 2002, when the Sunshine Project, an arms-control group based in Austin, Texas, posted on the Internet a trove of Pentagon documents uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act. Among these was a fifty-page study titled “The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique,” conducted by Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, home of the JNLWD-sponsored Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.
Penn State’s College of Medicine researchers agreed, contrary to accepted principles of medical ethics, that “the development and use of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable,” and identified a large number of promising drug candidates, including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and carfentanyl, the last commonly used by veterinarians to sedate large animals. The only problems they saw were in developing effective delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.
Little more was heard about the Pentagon’s “advanced riot-control agent” program until July 2008, when the Army announced that production was scheduled for its XM1063 “non-lethal personal suppression projectile,” an artillery shell that bursts in midair over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-square-foot area, each dispersing a chemical agent as it parachutes down. There are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the intended payload—a literal opiate of the masses.
[end excerpt]
5. Screaming Microwaves That Pierce the Skull -
Photo source: Wired
Researchers are in the process of developing the Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio or MEDUSA (that's right, from Greek mythology) [http://www.navysbirprogram.com/NavySearch/Summary/summary.aspx?pk=F5B07D68-1B19-4235-B140-950CE2E19D08], which uses a beam of microwaves to induce uncomfortable auditory sensations in the skull. The device exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html]. MEDUSA’s audio effect is loud enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. It may also cause a little brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/07/the-microwave-s/].MEDUSA's intended purpose is deterring crowds from entering a protected perimeter, like a nuclear site, and temporarily incapacitating unruly individuals. So far the weapon remains in development and is funded by the Navy.
6. Ear-Splitting Siren -
Photo source: Associated Press
The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/05/outside_at_the_/], built by American Technology Corporation, focuses and broadcasts sound over ranges of up to hundreds of yards. LRAD has been around for years, but Americans first took notice when police used it in Pittsburgh to ward off protesters at the 2009 G-20 summit [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/24/g20-pittsburgh-protest-police]. It is generally used in two ways [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/sonic-warfare-erupts-in-pittsburgh-honduras/]: as a megaphone to order protesters to disperse; or, if they disobey, as an “ear-splitting siren” to drive them away. While LRAD may not be deadly, it can permanently damage hearing, depending on how it’s used [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/sonic-blaster-deployed-to-local-political-events-beach-competition/].Similar sonic blasters have proven deadly. One is the Thunder Generator, an Israeli-developed shock wave cannon used by farmers to scare away crop-threatening bird. According to a Defense News report last year, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has licensed a firm called ArmyTec to market the Thunder Generator for military and security applications [http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4447499&c=FEA&s=TEC].
It works using gas from a cylinder of domestic liquid petroleum, which is mixed with air and then detonated, producing a series of high-intensity blasts. Patented “pulse detonation” technology ensures high-decibel blasts. With an effective range of up to 50 meters, the makers say it is extremely loud but will not do any lasting damage. They warn, however, that within 10 meters the Thunder Generator could cause permanent damage or even death [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/a-sonic-blaster-so-loud-it-could-be-deadly/#more-21519].
The Impact -
The application of pain to control or coerce people into submission helps achieve the desired aims of perception management, while sheltering the public from the brutality of such devices.
Perhaps these less-lethal tactics for crowd control do result in fewer injuries. But they also severely weaken our capacity to enact political change. Authorities have ever more creative ways to manage dissent, at a time when the need for change by popular demand is vital to the future of our society and the planet.
Fresno
2011-08-01 "Dyer’s Ten Years of Terror" by Mike Rhodes [editor [at] fresnoalliance.com]
[http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/08/01/18686656.php]
A Noontime vigil was held today (August 1, 2011) at the Fresno Police Department headquarters, marking the ten year anniversary of Jerry Dyer being the chief of police. Participants protested the 50+ people who have died under Dyer’s administration and demanded that Dyer leave office immediately. All photos by Simone Whalen-Rhodes.
n a statement sent to the media before the event, organizers wrote:
Supporters and families of the victims will be present to demand that Dyer leave now. The taxpayers are paying for four deputy chiefs of police. Its impossible to believe that not one of them could be appointed as interim as the nationwide search is undertaken by the City Manager and Mayor. With lawsuits pending against Dyer from within his administration and department, it would be best for him to leave now.
For a complete list of the victims go to http://www.cccjc.org Fresno Stolen lives report. Please take notice the names of the police officer's who shot the victims. Please note that 28 of them are repeat shooters who carry a badge to kill over and over again. Please note that over 50% of the stolen lives are Latinos.
For more information please contact Juan Avitia at 977-4247 or Gloria Hernandez at 268-2261
**************
At the event, a flier was distributed that said:
Dyer’s Ten Years of terror
Fifty one (51) dead under his administration and those are the ones that we know of. Since obtaining info through the Public Records Act we have learned of more than we initially had information about.
Discrimination lawsuits on race, gender, age and disability have been ongoing against the City of Fresno and the Fresno Police Department because of Dyer. A leader is someone who mentors others and trusts that others will carry on his work. Dyer is too paranoid to allow others to lead, hence his hesitancy to leave the office and save the taxpayers more money.
Dyer declared a war on gangs but instead increased gang involvement in Fresno. Dyer seems to think each Latino is a bulldog member and has refused to provide cultural and sensitivity training for his officers. He failed to provide crisis intervention training to deal with the mentally ill until the county dept of bx health paid for the training.
Dyer has allowed 28 repeat shooters to remain on the force.
Dyer pushed for the four million dollars police regional training center without taking it to the voters to decide if taxpayers would fund it.
Dyer relies on grant money to do the grantor’s work instead of what is needed to bring the crime rate down.
Dyer promised to work with the immigrant communities, instead he pushed to get tow trucks to pay referral fees (bribes) which allows the profiling of immigrants by impounding their cars by holding drunk driving check points in immigrant neighborhoods, which are less effective than targeting bars. Even after creating a policy that would allow people to call a licensed driver, his own officers would not obey his orders, so he pulled the field order. Indicating a lack of leadership over the ranks.
Dyer pushed his foundation to hold a Christian concert and lost money on it.
When Dyer was installed as California Chief of Police he was able to raised $65,000 using uniformed police officers to fundraise to throw a big party, instead of using the money to help the department’s needs.
Dyer has pushed the Department for CALEA accreditation each time costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars so that Dyer can look good.
"Accreditation will allow the Department to demonstrate the professionalism of the department and our dedication to providing the highest level of public safety services to the community through adherence to international standards of excellence."
And here the taxpayers thought the police department was already support to be doing this. Even the Police Union is against CALEA Accreditation because of the costs involved.
Dyer allows nepotism on the force. His sister who can’t even tell when her son is doing and selling drugs out of her house is out there pretending to know the above and harassing youth of color.
Dyer pulls facts out of the air accusing the stolen lives prior to the actual investigation as to whether in fact a shooting is justified more than often jumping to conclusions and assumptions.
Dyer spent millions of dollars on video policing (which is not being used for jack of budget and manpower and does not allow public to review the tapes) and red light policing another costly failure.
Dyer has his own personal bodyguards, not trusting his own officers to protect him. Could it be that the Spirit of Lte. Jose Moralez lives on in the Latino Community?
Dyer’s famous one liners are against people of color, aged and handicapped. Enough is enough. Dyer has got to go.
[http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/08/01/18686656.php]
A Noontime vigil was held today (August 1, 2011) at the Fresno Police Department headquarters, marking the ten year anniversary of Jerry Dyer being the chief of police. Participants protested the 50+ people who have died under Dyer’s administration and demanded that Dyer leave office immediately. All photos by Simone Whalen-Rhodes.
n a statement sent to the media before the event, organizers wrote:
Supporters and families of the victims will be present to demand that Dyer leave now. The taxpayers are paying for four deputy chiefs of police. Its impossible to believe that not one of them could be appointed as interim as the nationwide search is undertaken by the City Manager and Mayor. With lawsuits pending against Dyer from within his administration and department, it would be best for him to leave now.
For a complete list of the victims go to http://www.cccjc.org Fresno Stolen lives report. Please take notice the names of the police officer's who shot the victims. Please note that 28 of them are repeat shooters who carry a badge to kill over and over again. Please note that over 50% of the stolen lives are Latinos.
For more information please contact Juan Avitia at 977-4247 or Gloria Hernandez at 268-2261
**************
At the event, a flier was distributed that said:
Dyer’s Ten Years of terror
Fifty one (51) dead under his administration and those are the ones that we know of. Since obtaining info through the Public Records Act we have learned of more than we initially had information about.
Discrimination lawsuits on race, gender, age and disability have been ongoing against the City of Fresno and the Fresno Police Department because of Dyer. A leader is someone who mentors others and trusts that others will carry on his work. Dyer is too paranoid to allow others to lead, hence his hesitancy to leave the office and save the taxpayers more money.
Dyer declared a war on gangs but instead increased gang involvement in Fresno. Dyer seems to think each Latino is a bulldog member and has refused to provide cultural and sensitivity training for his officers. He failed to provide crisis intervention training to deal with the mentally ill until the county dept of bx health paid for the training.
Dyer has allowed 28 repeat shooters to remain on the force.
Dyer pushed for the four million dollars police regional training center without taking it to the voters to decide if taxpayers would fund it.
Dyer relies on grant money to do the grantor’s work instead of what is needed to bring the crime rate down.
Dyer promised to work with the immigrant communities, instead he pushed to get tow trucks to pay referral fees (bribes) which allows the profiling of immigrants by impounding their cars by holding drunk driving check points in immigrant neighborhoods, which are less effective than targeting bars. Even after creating a policy that would allow people to call a licensed driver, his own officers would not obey his orders, so he pulled the field order. Indicating a lack of leadership over the ranks.
Dyer pushed his foundation to hold a Christian concert and lost money on it.
When Dyer was installed as California Chief of Police he was able to raised $65,000 using uniformed police officers to fundraise to throw a big party, instead of using the money to help the department’s needs.
Dyer has pushed the Department for CALEA accreditation each time costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars so that Dyer can look good.
"Accreditation will allow the Department to demonstrate the professionalism of the department and our dedication to providing the highest level of public safety services to the community through adherence to international standards of excellence."
And here the taxpayers thought the police department was already support to be doing this. Even the Police Union is against CALEA Accreditation because of the costs involved.
Dyer allows nepotism on the force. His sister who can’t even tell when her son is doing and selling drugs out of her house is out there pretending to know the above and harassing youth of color.
Dyer pulls facts out of the air accusing the stolen lives prior to the actual investigation as to whether in fact a shooting is justified more than often jumping to conclusions and assumptions.
Dyer spent millions of dollars on video policing (which is not being used for jack of budget and manpower and does not allow public to review the tapes) and red light policing another costly failure.
Dyer has his own personal bodyguards, not trusting his own officers to protect him. Could it be that the Spirit of Lte. Jose Moralez lives on in the Latino Community?
Dyer’s famous one liners are against people of color, aged and handicapped. Enough is enough. Dyer has got to go.
Friday, July 29, 2011
"US House Committee Approves Internet Snooping Bill"
2011-07-29 from "NowPublic" [http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/us-house-committee-approves-internet-snooping-bill-2819588.html]
US House of Representatives Wants to Track All of Your Web Usage -
Of course, author Lamar Smith (R-TX) didn't call it the "Internet Snooping Bill". He called it the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011", because the rallying cry of "think of the children!" is a proven way to drown out dissent against a pointless and intrusive law. The House Judiciary Committee approved the Internet Snooping Bill 19-10.
In a nutshell, the law would force internet service providers (ISPs) such as Verizon and Comcast to store one year's worth of each and every customer's web-usage data. A last-minute rewrite made the bill even more intrusive than it was when first introduced. This means ISPs will be forced to store:
* Pageload history
* Login credentials
* Buying patterns
* Credit card info
Basically, everything you do online. If we were data thieves, we'd be licking our chops right now.
How Does This Protect Children? It Doesn't -
The problem with the bill is that collecting a year's worth of data from every American internet user would do nothing to stop child porn. There have been 10,000 arrests (not necessarily indictments) for child porn since 1996 in the US. That's roughly. 0.00003675 of the US population, not nearly compelling enough a number to warrant treating all Americans like criminals.
Now, the US government would have to sift through the records of all of the US internet users to (theoretically) string together a case against a potential child-porn viewer. Leaving aside for the moment the lack of law enforcement resources necessary to spy on the entire country at once, note that child-porn creators are not targeted here.
What are the chances, do you think, of the FBI being able to do this effectively? What happens when a criminal uses a web cafe or public library? As even a moment's thought will reveal, the only result of the Internet Snooping Bill is the government breathing down your neck.
As with the Patriot Act, this bill's effect belies its name.
Not only must we question Lamar Smith's logic, we must also question his understanding of what the internet actually is. This bill is broken by design. If emotional triggering is the strategy du jour, then fine: this bill is un-American. The EFF thinks so, too, and urges you to tell your Representative not to be an idiot.
One thing's for certain: Neither Smith nor the bill's supporters know what a VPN is... but now you do.
US House of Representatives Wants to Track All of Your Web Usage -
Of course, author Lamar Smith (R-TX) didn't call it the "Internet Snooping Bill". He called it the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011", because the rallying cry of "think of the children!" is a proven way to drown out dissent against a pointless and intrusive law. The House Judiciary Committee approved the Internet Snooping Bill 19-10.
In a nutshell, the law would force internet service providers (ISPs) such as Verizon and Comcast to store one year's worth of each and every customer's web-usage data. A last-minute rewrite made the bill even more intrusive than it was when first introduced. This means ISPs will be forced to store:
* Pageload history
* Login credentials
* Buying patterns
* Credit card info
Basically, everything you do online. If we were data thieves, we'd be licking our chops right now.
How Does This Protect Children? It Doesn't -
The problem with the bill is that collecting a year's worth of data from every American internet user would do nothing to stop child porn. There have been 10,000 arrests (not necessarily indictments) for child porn since 1996 in the US. That's roughly. 0.00003675 of the US population, not nearly compelling enough a number to warrant treating all Americans like criminals.
Now, the US government would have to sift through the records of all of the US internet users to (theoretically) string together a case against a potential child-porn viewer. Leaving aside for the moment the lack of law enforcement resources necessary to spy on the entire country at once, note that child-porn creators are not targeted here.
What are the chances, do you think, of the FBI being able to do this effectively? What happens when a criminal uses a web cafe or public library? As even a moment's thought will reveal, the only result of the Internet Snooping Bill is the government breathing down your neck.
As with the Patriot Act, this bill's effect belies its name.
Not only must we question Lamar Smith's logic, we must also question his understanding of what the internet actually is. This bill is broken by design. If emotional triggering is the strategy du jour, then fine: this bill is un-American. The EFF thinks so, too, and urges you to tell your Representative not to be an idiot.
One thing's for certain: Neither Smith nor the bill's supporters know what a VPN is... but now you do.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
2011-07-27 "15 Years in Prison For Taping the Cops? How Eavesdropping Laws Are Taking Away Our Best Defense Against Police Brutality; More and more people use their smartphones to record police misconduct. But laws against wiretapping are being used to intimidate and stop them" by Rania Khalek
[http://www.alternet.org/story/151806/15_years_in_prison_for_taping_the_cops_how_eavesdropping_laws_are_taking_away_our_best_defense_against_police_brutality/]
Over Memorial Day weekend this past May, residents of Miami Beach witnessed a horrific display of police brutality as 12 cops sprayed Raymond Herisse's car with 100 bullets, killing him [http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/06/raymond_herisse_ided_as_man_sh.php]. The shooting provoked outrage in the surrounding community, not only because of the murder, but because of what the police did afterward.
Officers on the scene confiscated and smashed witnesses' cell phones; later, when they were confronted by the media, the police denied trying to destroy videos of the incident.
But 35-year-old Narces Benoit removed his HTC EVO’s SIM card and hid it in his mouth [http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/08/6812110-memory-card-in-mouth-saves-police-shooting-video]. He later sold the video to CNN, placing the police in the awkward position of explaining why they lied about allegations of cell phone destruction. More importantly, the video showed at least two officers pointing guns at Benoit, demanding that he stop filming.
Police brutality takes many forms around the country on a regular basis, particularly in poor and minority neighborhoods. Sometimes, the only method of accountability is a victim’s word (if they are still alive) against that of an officer. Unsurprisingly, the police officer’s version of the story is often adequate for a judge to dismiss allegations of wrongdoing, unless there is hard evidence of misconduct, such as a video or audio recording, which can be useful to unravel conflicting versions of police-citizen encounters.
Due to advancements in technology, the average citizen carries a digital camera in his or her pocket or purse, creating a potential army of amateur videographers on every street corner. A quick YouTube search of "police brutality" lists endless videos, often cell phone footage, of what appear to be police acting with unnecessary and violent force. Some of those videos have served a crucial role in bringing charges against brutality that may have gone unaddressed had it not been for bystanders recording.
One would think the fear of videographers on every block would be a powerful deterrent to police misconduct. However, legislatures are not taking this newfound power against police abuse lightly. In at least three states, it is illegal to record any on-duty police officer, even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]. The legal justification is usually based on the warped interpretation of existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited.
Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland are among the 12 states [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage] where all parties must consent for a recording to be legal. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested and charged with a felony. Most all-party consent states (except Illinois and Massachusetts) include a "privacy provision" that says a violation occurs only when the offended party has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private. This is meant to protect TV news crews and people who record public meetings — where it is obvious to all that recording is underway — from accidentally committing a felony.
Massachusetts [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ma-supreme-judicial-court/1330122.html] and Illinois [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/08/chicago-district-attorney-recording-bad-cops_n_872921.html] are the only states that do not recognize an expectation-to-privacy provision to their all-party consent laws. While courts in Massachusetts have generally held that secretly recording police is illegal, recording them openly is not. Illinois, on the other hand, is the only state where the legislature specifically amended the state's wiretapping law to make it illegal to record on-duty police officers without their consent, even in public.
Cases Keep Piling Up -
Recording on-duty police officers has gained momentum in states around the country for some time now. But it's only in the last few years, after several high-profile incidents, that the topic has begun to generate nationwide headlines and debate.
Two of these incidents occurred in Maryland last year, just weeks apart.
One involved Jack McKenna [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-13/justice/maryland.police.beating_1_third-officer-two-officers-police-officer?_s=PM:CRIME], who was arrested by Prince George's county police last March and charged with assault and resisting arrest when he was out celebrating the University of Maryland basketball victory over Duke. Fortunately for him, his fellow Terps fans happened to record the encounter on their cell phones, showing riot police throwing McKenna against a wall and beating him with batons. Once the videos appeared on the Internet, Prince George's County suspended the officers and dropped the charges against McKenna.
The second incident took place last April, when Maryland State Trooper David Uhler pulled over Anthony Graber for speeding and reckless driving. Graber had swerved across several lanes and did at least one wheelie on his motorcycle while driving 80mph. Graber had a video camera mounted to his motorcycle helmet that was recording at the time of the stop, and captured footage of Uhler, dressed in plainclothes while yelling with his gun in hand.
Although Graber was only given a traffic ticket, he posted the video on YouTube to publicize Uhler's threatening behavior [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/15/AR2010061505556.html]. Maryland State police responded by raiding Graber's home, confiscating his computer and charging him with two felonies. One was for violating Maryland's wiretapping law by recording a trooper without his consent, and the other was for "possession of an intercept device," a provision intended for bugs and wiretaps but in this case referred to Graber's video camera. As a result, Graber faced up to 16 years in prison for recording a police officer during a public traffic stop.
Graber's case was ultimately dismissed [http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/09/motorcyclist_wins_taping_case.html], as are almost all of these cases, on the grounds that on-duty cops have no such expectation of privacy, which is in accordance with every court in the country that has considered the issue. Because there is no legal justification, the charges are usually dropped or never filed at all. But that doesn't stop the arrests. Radley Balko points out that, more often than not, police arrest photographers for obstructing law enforcement even in states that have no wiretapping law [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]:
“In addition to arresting citizens with cameras for wiretapping, police can use vaguer catch-all charges, such as interfering with a police officer, refusing to obey a lawful order, or obstructing an arrest or police action. Such arrests are far more common. Even more frequent are incidents where police don’t make arrests but illegally confiscate cameras, delete photos and videos, or incorrectly warn camera-wielding citizens that they aren’t allowed to film.”
One such encounter took place earlier this year, when a California man, who recorded a police officer arresting someone at gunpoint down the street, found himself handcuffed as well. Lonell Duchine was videotaping the arrest on his cell phone from inside his garage, when an officer pulled up to his home and demanded the phone for evidence [http://www.ktvu.com/news/27551276/detail.html]. Duchine refused, so the police officer arrested him, citing “police interference” for withholding evidence.
While illegal confiscation happens in a range of scenarios, from traffic stops to people's homes, the most famous example was on New Year’s day 2009, when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Officer Johannes Mehserle shot 21-year-old Oscar Grant at point-blank range, as he lay face down in an Oakland subway station, allegedly resisting arrest [http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/06/remembering_oscar_grant_on_the_day_of_johannes_mehserles_release.html]. The incident captured the nation's attention not simply because an unarmed black man was publicly killed by a white police officer, but also because dozens of onlookers captured it on their cell phones for the world to see.
In California, police are not permitted to confiscate a phone unless the phone was used in a crime [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]. Nonetheless, after the incident BART police attempted to confiscate the phones of subway riders, and even chased one camera-wielder onto a subway car [http://www.pixiq.com/article/do-police-have-the-right-to-confiscate-your-camera?page=5]. Had a bystander not been equipped with his cell phone, charges may not have been brought against Mehserle, demonstrating the crucial role video recording can play in accountability. Since then there have been multiple incidents of police brutality recorded by cell phones, which may have otherwise gone unaddressed.
The most pernicious prosecutions to date have taken place in Illinois, where the sentence for recording a police officer is considered a class 1 felony — on par with a rape charge — and can land a person behind bars for more than a decade [http://www.arte-sana.com/articles/rape_statutes.pdf].
Tiawonda Moore from Chicago, Illinois, faces up to 15 years in prison for using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside police headquarters [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2]. She was there last August to file a sexual harassment complaint against another officer, who she alleges had fondled her and left his personal telephone number when he was at her home investigating a domestic dispute. She says the police department actively discouraged her from filing a report, so out of frustration, she began to record the conversations on her phone. Although the case initially received national media coverage, attention has since died down as 21-year-old Moore awaits a trial date that continues to be pushed back.
Michael Allison is another Illinois resident facing the wrath of the eavesdropping law [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras]. The 41-year-old mechanic from Bridgeport faces four counts of violating the eavesdropping law, which adds up to a possible 75-year sentence. Allison believed the local police were harassing him in retaliation for a lawsuit he'd filed against the city over a local zoning ordinance, so he began to record his conversations with them.
Allison was eventually charged with violating the zoning ordinance. When he was told there would be no record of his trial, he informed court officials that he would record his trial with a digital recorder. This prompted the judge to have him arrested on the day of his trial, for violating her right to privacy. After confiscating Allison's digital recorder, the police found the recordings between Allison and the cops.
Christopher Drew, a 60-year-old artist and teacher, is also being prosecuted for violating the eavesdropping law [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html]. Drew was arrested in December 2009 for selling art without a permit on the streets of Chicago. He recorded his arrest, and now faces four to 15 years for documenting the incident.
These are just a handful of cases that illustrate the danger that comes with recording police in public. Carlos Miller, a journalist who has been arrested twice for photographing the police, has documented hundreds of similar cases on his blog, Photography is Not a Crime [http://www.pixiq.com/user/carlosmiller].
What Do the Police Think?
In the most comprehensive article to date about recording the police —" The War on Cameras [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras]" — Radley Balko interviewed James Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) [http://www.fop.net/], which describes itself as "the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers." Pasco argues that videotaping police officers in public should be illegal because it can intimidate officers from doing their jobs. Mark Donahue, president of FOP, concurs, telling the New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?pagewanted=1] that his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act and was relieved that the ACLU's challenge filed last year failed, adding that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”
Police officers are not a monolith [http://www.americancopmagazine.com/expecting-privacy-in-public/], so while there are many, like Pasco and Donahue, who support these laws, there are also many who doubtless oppose them. At the same time, police apprehension about being videotaped on the job is understandable, especially with the advancement in cell-phone technology increasing at record speed. Some also worry that their actions will be preserved and used against them in ways that weren't possible just a few years ago, while others are simply uncomfortable being videotaped.
However, when considering recent developments in police surveillance, Pasco's argument is rather baffling. In stark contrast to the laws banning citizens from monitoring police misconduct with recording devices, police officers are equipped with top-of-line surveillance cameras in their cars and on their uniforms. According to a recent AP report [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/09/ap/business/main20078184.shtml], hundreds of police departments across the country are equipping officers with tiny body cameras to record anything from a traffic stop to a hot vehicle pursuit to an unfolding violent crime. The mini cameras have even spawned a new cable reality TV series, "Police POV," which uses police video from Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Fort Smith, Ark.
The cameras are intended to provide more transparency and security to officers on the street and to reduce the number of misconduct complaints and potential lawsuits. Which begs the question: what is the difference between these cameras and the footage captured by citizens in public? Why is it acceptable for police officers to record, but not citizens? Aren't the uniform and dashboard cameras, which unlike citizen recordings document police actions all through the day, intimidating police from doing their jobs, just as Pasco suggested?
Unconstitutional -
Pasco goes on to suggest that we have to "put faith and trust in our authority figures," which is the absolute antithesis of a functioning democracy and the US constitution, which rests on transparency and accountability.
As usual, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the lead in challenging these laws. In August of last year, the ACLU of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago challenging the Illinois Eavesdropping Act (ACLU v. Anita Alvarez [http://www.newsroomlawblog.com/uploads/file/ACLU%20recording%20police%20case(1).pdf]), arguing that the act violates the First Amendment and has been used to thwart people who simply want to monitor police activity, including the ACLU itself [http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/2010/08/aclu-suit-seeks-to-allow-citizen-recording-of-police-in-action/]. The Illinois law is unique in that it makes it a crime to record not only private but also public conversations made without consent of all parties. In the lawsuit, the ACLU pointed to six Illinois residents who have faced felony charges after being accused of violating the state’s eavesdropping law for recording police making arrests in public venues.
Although the lawsuit was dismissed in January, the ACLU has appealed the suit and expects to begin making oral arguments sometime in the fall. Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney with the Illinois Chapter of the ACLU, explained why the eavesdropping law is unconstitutional:
"The First Amendment protects the right to gather information for the purpose of sharing it with other people and for the purpose of using it to petition government for redress of grievances. And so for a long time courts have protected the right to record by various means what government officials are doing in public, so the press can publish that and so that citizens can use it to petition government.
"When we talk about police officers doing their jobs in public, we’re talking about very important government activity which is often used properly but sometimes is abused, and it’s very important that citizens have the ability to document what police are doing so they can seek improvement in police policy and the like… therefore, the first amendment protects the right to make audio-recordings of on duty police officers who are doing their jobs in public places."
Schwartz went on to compare audio-recording to other forms of documentation that, although less efficient, are not illegal:
"We believe that a police officer who is doing their job in a public place does not have an expectation of privacy. Even the police can see that if they’re arresting somebody on a corner, other people can watch….they don’t dispute that someone can stand a small distance away and watch, or that the person who’s watching can take out a pen and take notes or on what they’re seeing, or that they can take photographs of what they’re seeing or that they can make a silent video recording of what they’re seeing. The addition of the audio is a very powerful way for citizens to ensure that police officers are turning square corners."
Schwartz also emphasized that resolving disputing testimonies with citizen recording, while important, is not the only benefit to overturning the eavesdropping law:
"If police officers are doing their jobs in public places, for example policing a demonstration and something goes awry, it is very valuable for there to be a strong record, including audio of what happened, so that if there is a need to change the rules, the public can go to the government and say "look what happened, change the rules about how police officers are enforcing the peace at a political demonstration."
The court's decision in this case is said to be critically important in setting a precedent that will either protect or endanger newsgatherers‘ constitutional rights to monitor and record police misconduct. Schwartz said the ACLU is "cautiously optimistic" about the eventual ruling, which is expected to be handed down sometime in 2012.
[http://www.alternet.org/story/151806/15_years_in_prison_for_taping_the_cops_how_eavesdropping_laws_are_taking_away_our_best_defense_against_police_brutality/]
Over Memorial Day weekend this past May, residents of Miami Beach witnessed a horrific display of police brutality as 12 cops sprayed Raymond Herisse's car with 100 bullets, killing him [http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/06/raymond_herisse_ided_as_man_sh.php]. The shooting provoked outrage in the surrounding community, not only because of the murder, but because of what the police did afterward.Officers on the scene confiscated and smashed witnesses' cell phones; later, when they were confronted by the media, the police denied trying to destroy videos of the incident.
But 35-year-old Narces Benoit removed his HTC EVO’s SIM card and hid it in his mouth [http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/08/6812110-memory-card-in-mouth-saves-police-shooting-video]. He later sold the video to CNN, placing the police in the awkward position of explaining why they lied about allegations of cell phone destruction. More importantly, the video showed at least two officers pointing guns at Benoit, demanding that he stop filming.
Police brutality takes many forms around the country on a regular basis, particularly in poor and minority neighborhoods. Sometimes, the only method of accountability is a victim’s word (if they are still alive) against that of an officer. Unsurprisingly, the police officer’s version of the story is often adequate for a judge to dismiss allegations of wrongdoing, unless there is hard evidence of misconduct, such as a video or audio recording, which can be useful to unravel conflicting versions of police-citizen encounters.
Due to advancements in technology, the average citizen carries a digital camera in his or her pocket or purse, creating a potential army of amateur videographers on every street corner. A quick YouTube search of "police brutality" lists endless videos, often cell phone footage, of what appear to be police acting with unnecessary and violent force. Some of those videos have served a crucial role in bringing charges against brutality that may have gone unaddressed had it not been for bystanders recording.
One would think the fear of videographers on every block would be a powerful deterrent to police misconduct. However, legislatures are not taking this newfound power against police abuse lightly. In at least three states, it is illegal to record any on-duty police officer, even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]. The legal justification is usually based on the warped interpretation of existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited.
Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland are among the 12 states [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage] where all parties must consent for a recording to be legal. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested and charged with a felony. Most all-party consent states (except Illinois and Massachusetts) include a "privacy provision" that says a violation occurs only when the offended party has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private. This is meant to protect TV news crews and people who record public meetings — where it is obvious to all that recording is underway — from accidentally committing a felony.
Massachusetts [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ma-supreme-judicial-court/1330122.html] and Illinois [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/08/chicago-district-attorney-recording-bad-cops_n_872921.html] are the only states that do not recognize an expectation-to-privacy provision to their all-party consent laws. While courts in Massachusetts have generally held that secretly recording police is illegal, recording them openly is not. Illinois, on the other hand, is the only state where the legislature specifically amended the state's wiretapping law to make it illegal to record on-duty police officers without their consent, even in public.
Cases Keep Piling Up -
Recording on-duty police officers has gained momentum in states around the country for some time now. But it's only in the last few years, after several high-profile incidents, that the topic has begun to generate nationwide headlines and debate.
Two of these incidents occurred in Maryland last year, just weeks apart.
One involved Jack McKenna [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-13/justice/maryland.police.beating_1_third-officer-two-officers-police-officer?_s=PM:CRIME], who was arrested by Prince George's county police last March and charged with assault and resisting arrest when he was out celebrating the University of Maryland basketball victory over Duke. Fortunately for him, his fellow Terps fans happened to record the encounter on their cell phones, showing riot police throwing McKenna against a wall and beating him with batons. Once the videos appeared on the Internet, Prince George's County suspended the officers and dropped the charges against McKenna.
The second incident took place last April, when Maryland State Trooper David Uhler pulled over Anthony Graber for speeding and reckless driving. Graber had swerved across several lanes and did at least one wheelie on his motorcycle while driving 80mph. Graber had a video camera mounted to his motorcycle helmet that was recording at the time of the stop, and captured footage of Uhler, dressed in plainclothes while yelling with his gun in hand.
Although Graber was only given a traffic ticket, he posted the video on YouTube to publicize Uhler's threatening behavior [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/15/AR2010061505556.html]. Maryland State police responded by raiding Graber's home, confiscating his computer and charging him with two felonies. One was for violating Maryland's wiretapping law by recording a trooper without his consent, and the other was for "possession of an intercept device," a provision intended for bugs and wiretaps but in this case referred to Graber's video camera. As a result, Graber faced up to 16 years in prison for recording a police officer during a public traffic stop.
Graber's case was ultimately dismissed [http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/09/motorcyclist_wins_taping_case.html], as are almost all of these cases, on the grounds that on-duty cops have no such expectation of privacy, which is in accordance with every court in the country that has considered the issue. Because there is no legal justification, the charges are usually dropped or never filed at all. But that doesn't stop the arrests. Radley Balko points out that, more often than not, police arrest photographers for obstructing law enforcement even in states that have no wiretapping law [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]:
“In addition to arresting citizens with cameras for wiretapping, police can use vaguer catch-all charges, such as interfering with a police officer, refusing to obey a lawful order, or obstructing an arrest or police action. Such arrests are far more common. Even more frequent are incidents where police don’t make arrests but illegally confiscate cameras, delete photos and videos, or incorrectly warn camera-wielding citizens that they aren’t allowed to film.”
One such encounter took place earlier this year, when a California man, who recorded a police officer arresting someone at gunpoint down the street, found himself handcuffed as well. Lonell Duchine was videotaping the arrest on his cell phone from inside his garage, when an officer pulled up to his home and demanded the phone for evidence [http://www.ktvu.com/news/27551276/detail.html]. Duchine refused, so the police officer arrested him, citing “police interference” for withholding evidence.
While illegal confiscation happens in a range of scenarios, from traffic stops to people's homes, the most famous example was on New Year’s day 2009, when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Officer Johannes Mehserle shot 21-year-old Oscar Grant at point-blank range, as he lay face down in an Oakland subway station, allegedly resisting arrest [http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/06/remembering_oscar_grant_on_the_day_of_johannes_mehserles_release.html]. The incident captured the nation's attention not simply because an unarmed black man was publicly killed by a white police officer, but also because dozens of onlookers captured it on their cell phones for the world to see.
In California, police are not permitted to confiscate a phone unless the phone was used in a crime [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage]. Nonetheless, after the incident BART police attempted to confiscate the phones of subway riders, and even chased one camera-wielder onto a subway car [http://www.pixiq.com/article/do-police-have-the-right-to-confiscate-your-camera?page=5]. Had a bystander not been equipped with his cell phone, charges may not have been brought against Mehserle, demonstrating the crucial role video recording can play in accountability. Since then there have been multiple incidents of police brutality recorded by cell phones, which may have otherwise gone unaddressed.
The most pernicious prosecutions to date have taken place in Illinois, where the sentence for recording a police officer is considered a class 1 felony — on par with a rape charge — and can land a person behind bars for more than a decade [http://www.arte-sana.com/articles/rape_statutes.pdf].
Tiawonda Moore from Chicago, Illinois, faces up to 15 years in prison for using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside police headquarters [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2]. She was there last August to file a sexual harassment complaint against another officer, who she alleges had fondled her and left his personal telephone number when he was at her home investigating a domestic dispute. She says the police department actively discouraged her from filing a report, so out of frustration, she began to record the conversations on her phone. Although the case initially received national media coverage, attention has since died down as 21-year-old Moore awaits a trial date that continues to be pushed back.
Michael Allison is another Illinois resident facing the wrath of the eavesdropping law [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras]. The 41-year-old mechanic from Bridgeport faces four counts of violating the eavesdropping law, which adds up to a possible 75-year sentence. Allison believed the local police were harassing him in retaliation for a lawsuit he'd filed against the city over a local zoning ordinance, so he began to record his conversations with them.
Allison was eventually charged with violating the zoning ordinance. When he was told there would be no record of his trial, he informed court officials that he would record his trial with a digital recorder. This prompted the judge to have him arrested on the day of his trial, for violating her right to privacy. After confiscating Allison's digital recorder, the police found the recordings between Allison and the cops.
Christopher Drew, a 60-year-old artist and teacher, is also being prosecuted for violating the eavesdropping law [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html]. Drew was arrested in December 2009 for selling art without a permit on the streets of Chicago. He recorded his arrest, and now faces four to 15 years for documenting the incident.
These are just a handful of cases that illustrate the danger that comes with recording police in public. Carlos Miller, a journalist who has been arrested twice for photographing the police, has documented hundreds of similar cases on his blog, Photography is Not a Crime [http://www.pixiq.com/user/carlosmiller].
What Do the Police Think?
In the most comprehensive article to date about recording the police —" The War on Cameras [http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras]" — Radley Balko interviewed James Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) [http://www.fop.net/], which describes itself as "the world's largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers." Pasco argues that videotaping police officers in public should be illegal because it can intimidate officers from doing their jobs. Mark Donahue, president of FOP, concurs, telling the New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23cnceavesdropping.html?pagewanted=1] that his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act and was relieved that the ACLU's challenge filed last year failed, adding that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”
Police officers are not a monolith [http://www.americancopmagazine.com/expecting-privacy-in-public/], so while there are many, like Pasco and Donahue, who support these laws, there are also many who doubtless oppose them. At the same time, police apprehension about being videotaped on the job is understandable, especially with the advancement in cell-phone technology increasing at record speed. Some also worry that their actions will be preserved and used against them in ways that weren't possible just a few years ago, while others are simply uncomfortable being videotaped.
However, when considering recent developments in police surveillance, Pasco's argument is rather baffling. In stark contrast to the laws banning citizens from monitoring police misconduct with recording devices, police officers are equipped with top-of-line surveillance cameras in their cars and on their uniforms. According to a recent AP report [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/09/ap/business/main20078184.shtml], hundreds of police departments across the country are equipping officers with tiny body cameras to record anything from a traffic stop to a hot vehicle pursuit to an unfolding violent crime. The mini cameras have even spawned a new cable reality TV series, "Police POV," which uses police video from Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Fort Smith, Ark.
The cameras are intended to provide more transparency and security to officers on the street and to reduce the number of misconduct complaints and potential lawsuits. Which begs the question: what is the difference between these cameras and the footage captured by citizens in public? Why is it acceptable for police officers to record, but not citizens? Aren't the uniform and dashboard cameras, which unlike citizen recordings document police actions all through the day, intimidating police from doing their jobs, just as Pasco suggested?
Unconstitutional -
Pasco goes on to suggest that we have to "put faith and trust in our authority figures," which is the absolute antithesis of a functioning democracy and the US constitution, which rests on transparency and accountability.
As usual, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the lead in challenging these laws. In August of last year, the ACLU of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago challenging the Illinois Eavesdropping Act (ACLU v. Anita Alvarez [http://www.newsroomlawblog.com/uploads/file/ACLU%20recording%20police%20case(1).pdf]), arguing that the act violates the First Amendment and has been used to thwart people who simply want to monitor police activity, including the ACLU itself [http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/2010/08/aclu-suit-seeks-to-allow-citizen-recording-of-police-in-action/]. The Illinois law is unique in that it makes it a crime to record not only private but also public conversations made without consent of all parties. In the lawsuit, the ACLU pointed to six Illinois residents who have faced felony charges after being accused of violating the state’s eavesdropping law for recording police making arrests in public venues.
Although the lawsuit was dismissed in January, the ACLU has appealed the suit and expects to begin making oral arguments sometime in the fall. Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney with the Illinois Chapter of the ACLU, explained why the eavesdropping law is unconstitutional:
"The First Amendment protects the right to gather information for the purpose of sharing it with other people and for the purpose of using it to petition government for redress of grievances. And so for a long time courts have protected the right to record by various means what government officials are doing in public, so the press can publish that and so that citizens can use it to petition government.
"When we talk about police officers doing their jobs in public, we’re talking about very important government activity which is often used properly but sometimes is abused, and it’s very important that citizens have the ability to document what police are doing so they can seek improvement in police policy and the like… therefore, the first amendment protects the right to make audio-recordings of on duty police officers who are doing their jobs in public places."
Schwartz went on to compare audio-recording to other forms of documentation that, although less efficient, are not illegal:
"We believe that a police officer who is doing their job in a public place does not have an expectation of privacy. Even the police can see that if they’re arresting somebody on a corner, other people can watch….they don’t dispute that someone can stand a small distance away and watch, or that the person who’s watching can take out a pen and take notes or on what they’re seeing, or that they can take photographs of what they’re seeing or that they can make a silent video recording of what they’re seeing. The addition of the audio is a very powerful way for citizens to ensure that police officers are turning square corners."
Schwartz also emphasized that resolving disputing testimonies with citizen recording, while important, is not the only benefit to overturning the eavesdropping law:
"If police officers are doing their jobs in public places, for example policing a demonstration and something goes awry, it is very valuable for there to be a strong record, including audio of what happened, so that if there is a need to change the rules, the public can go to the government and say "look what happened, change the rules about how police officers are enforcing the peace at a political demonstration."
The court's decision in this case is said to be critically important in setting a precedent that will either protect or endanger newsgatherers‘ constitutional rights to monitor and record police misconduct. Schwartz said the ACLU is "cautiously optimistic" about the eventual ruling, which is expected to be handed down sometime in 2012.
2011-07-27 "A City Full of Charming Cops, Police Chief Promises" by Octavio Lopez Raygoza from "San Francisco Mission Local" newspaper
[http://missionlocal.org/2011/07/citywide-rules-for-charming-police/]
At a neighborhood meeting in the Bayview last weekend, Police Chief Greg Suhr and his PowerPoint presentation were shouted off the stage.
Last night’s community meeting in the Mission was a dramatic contrast. Nearly a hundred residents sat politely in the auditorium of Cesar Chavez Elementary, waiting for their chance to comment on the SFPD’s plan to develop citywide community policing standards.
“It’s been long overdue,” said the chief of his proposal to include a community policing policy in the SFPD’s general orders. The general orders are the “rule books” that all officers are bound to follow.
To illustrate his point, Suhr had brought, as he so often does, a PowerPoint presentation.
Community policing, Suhr explained as bullet-point descriptions flashed on the screen, is an organizational strategy in which the police work collaboratively with the community to address violent crime, create safer communities, and preserve healthy and vibrant neighborhoods
Community policing has been practiced in San Francisco since the 1980s, but until now it has never been part of official SFPD policy. Every district has taken a different approach.
The Mission is, in many ways, an excellent example of community policing in action, said Suhr — largely due to the efforts of the neighborhood’s police captain, Greg Corrales.
“Captain Corrales is a softie,” Suhr said. He paused. “That was a joke.”
The citywide standards would codify practices already carried out in the Mission, such as assigning beat cops to a consistent geographic area for a long period of time so that they have time to get to know the people on those beats.
When the time for community input rolled around, it became clear that a few attendees felt that the Mission’s police officers still have a way to go in the likeablity department.
“Police need to be more approachable by the community,” complained one audience member. How would the new changes fix that?
“We will have charming, gregarious, engaged, chatty captains,” said Suhr.
But not everyone was satisfied. “What if they are not?” asked an audience member.
“Will they be held accountable?” asked another.
“Hey,” said Suhr, gesturing toward the PowerPoint. “It says right here that you can’t be a jerk officer.”
Once community policing standards are included in the general orders, Suhr said, officers will be held accountable for not following the best practices.
Suhr said the goal was to encourage officers to go the extra mile to make connections with the community. He gave an example: Years ago, he and some other officers were challenged to a game of basketball by a group of teens in a public park in the Western Addition.
“We took our bars and stars and put them in the trunk of our car,” Suhr said. “We won. We cheated and fouled, but they still remember it today.”
The meeting was over. “Thanks, this is awesome,” said one audience member.
“You just being available today makes a great difference. Thank you,” said another.
“This is definitely going better than last week,” said Suhr.
Police Chief, Greg Suhr, speaks at Cesar Chavez Elementary.
[http://missionlocal.org/2011/07/citywide-rules-for-charming-police/]
At a neighborhood meeting in the Bayview last weekend, Police Chief Greg Suhr and his PowerPoint presentation were shouted off the stage.
Last night’s community meeting in the Mission was a dramatic contrast. Nearly a hundred residents sat politely in the auditorium of Cesar Chavez Elementary, waiting for their chance to comment on the SFPD’s plan to develop citywide community policing standards.
“It’s been long overdue,” said the chief of his proposal to include a community policing policy in the SFPD’s general orders. The general orders are the “rule books” that all officers are bound to follow.
To illustrate his point, Suhr had brought, as he so often does, a PowerPoint presentation.
Community policing, Suhr explained as bullet-point descriptions flashed on the screen, is an organizational strategy in which the police work collaboratively with the community to address violent crime, create safer communities, and preserve healthy and vibrant neighborhoods
Community policing has been practiced in San Francisco since the 1980s, but until now it has never been part of official SFPD policy. Every district has taken a different approach.
The Mission is, in many ways, an excellent example of community policing in action, said Suhr — largely due to the efforts of the neighborhood’s police captain, Greg Corrales.
“Captain Corrales is a softie,” Suhr said. He paused. “That was a joke.”
The citywide standards would codify practices already carried out in the Mission, such as assigning beat cops to a consistent geographic area for a long period of time so that they have time to get to know the people on those beats.
When the time for community input rolled around, it became clear that a few attendees felt that the Mission’s police officers still have a way to go in the likeablity department.
“Police need to be more approachable by the community,” complained one audience member. How would the new changes fix that?
“We will have charming, gregarious, engaged, chatty captains,” said Suhr.
But not everyone was satisfied. “What if they are not?” asked an audience member.
“Will they be held accountable?” asked another.
“Hey,” said Suhr, gesturing toward the PowerPoint. “It says right here that you can’t be a jerk officer.”
Once community policing standards are included in the general orders, Suhr said, officers will be held accountable for not following the best practices.
Suhr said the goal was to encourage officers to go the extra mile to make connections with the community. He gave an example: Years ago, he and some other officers were challenged to a game of basketball by a group of teens in a public park in the Western Addition.
“We took our bars and stars and put them in the trunk of our car,” Suhr said. “We won. We cheated and fouled, but they still remember it today.”
The meeting was over. “Thanks, this is awesome,” said one audience member.
“You just being available today makes a great difference. Thank you,” said another.
“This is definitely going better than last week,” said Suhr.
Police Chief, Greg Suhr, speaks at Cesar Chavez Elementary.
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