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Something essential about police tactics that came up, over and over, when researching this story is that a narrower focus on less-lethal weapons can obscure an entire discussion on less-lethal tactics https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-less-lethal-weapons-actually-do/
The existence and nature of weapons is important, but just so are the ways people are 1) trained to use them, 2) actually end up using them, and 3) are legally protected in those uses.
The same tool, ostensibly allowed to disperse a crowd, can instead be used to pin one in place
The same tool, ostensibly allowed to disperse a crowd, can instead be used to pin one in place
Impact munitions (rubber bullets, etc) in theory exist so police can disarm people with lethal weapons at distance without killing them. But in practice (and tracing back to their origins among colonial security forces), firing at crowds makes the injury, not disarming, the point
Police, as paid and equipped agents of the state, have demonstrated again and again that there interest is in their own continued survival as an institution, rather than in protecting anything that can be construed as the public or public interest. How they use weapons shows that
Defunding police, one of the more minimal demands in the present moment, is a way to re-assert civilian control over a publicly paid for and armed force who repeatedly acts in ways that exacerbate tensions, and who are the part of the equation with a clear chain of command.
As coda, consider the Tueller Drill, offered as theory in 1983 & a standard part of training & threat identification since. It's the origin of the "21-foot-rule" which says a person with a knife is lethal at 21 feet.
How much police violence today is downstream from this rule?
How much police violence today is downstream from this rule?
