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Non-lethal weapons, also called less-lethal weapons, less-than-lethal weapons, non-deadly weapons, compliance weapons, or pain-inducing weapons are weapons intended to be less likely to kill a living target than conventional weapons such as knives and firearms. It is often understood that unintended or incidental casualties are risked wherever force is applied, but non-lethal weapons try to minimise the risk of casualties as much as possible. Non-lethal weapons are used in policing and combat situations to limit the escalation of conflict where employment of lethal force is prohibited or undesirable, where rules of engagement require minimum casualties, or where policy restricts the use of conventional force. These weapons occasionally cause serious injuries or death; the term "less-lethal" has been preferred by some organizations as it describes the risks of death more accurately than the term "non-lethal", which some have argued is a misnomer.
Rubber bullets are a type of Baton round. Despite the name, rubber bullets typically have either a metal core with a rubber coating, or are a homogeneous admixture with rubber being a minority component. They are a less lethal alternative to metal projectiles, but can still cause serious injuries such as blindness, permanent disability, and death.
A bean bag round, also known by its trademarked name flexible baton round, is a type of baton round, fired from a shotgun, and used for less lethal apprehension of suspects.
A plastic bullet or plastic baton round (PBR) is a less-lethal projectile fired from a specialised gun. Although designed as a less-lethal weapon, they have caused a number of deaths. Plastic bullets are intended to be shot directly at the subject, causing bruising, or even broken bones when used correctly. They are generally used for riot control. Plastic bullets were invented in 1973 by the British security forces for use against demonstrators in Northern Ireland. They were developed to replace their rubber bullets in an attempt to reduce fatalities. If misused they can still cause fatal injury.
1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999. The Conference was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations.
Riot control refers to the measures used by law enforcement, military, or security forces to control, disperse, and arrest people who are involved in a riot, demonstration, or protest. If a riot is spontaneous and irrational, actions which cause people to stop and think for a moment can be enough to stop it. However, these methods usually fail when there is severe anger with a legitimate cause, or the riot was planned or organized. Riot control personnel have long used less lethal weapons such as batons and whips to disperse crowds and detain rioters. Since the 1980s, riot control officers have also used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and electric tasers. In some cases, riot squads may also use Long Range Acoustic Devices, water cannons, armoured fighting vehicles, aerial surveillance, police dogs or mounted police on horses. Persons performing riot control typically wear protective equipment such as riot helmets, face visors, body armor, gas masks and riot shields. However, there are also cases where lethal weapons are used to violently suppress a protest or riot, as in the Boston Massacre, Haymarket Massacre, Banana Massacre, Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Kent State Shootings, Soweto Uprising, Mendiola Massacre, Bloody Sunday (1905), Ponce massacre, Bloody Sunday (1972), Tiananmen Square Protests (1989), Venezuelan Protest (2017), Tuticorin Massacre (2018), Gaza Fence Massacres (2018), 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.
Baton rounds, also known as kinetic impact projectiles, are a less lethal alternative to traditional bullets, typically used for riot control.
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) is the principal law enforcement agency of the city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, except for the campus of the University of Washington, for which responsibility falls to the University of Washington Police Department. It is nationally accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.
A police riot is a riot carried out by the police; a riot that the police are responsible for instigating, escalating or sustaining as a violent confrontation; an event characterized by widespread police brutality; a mass police action that is violently undertaken against civilians for the purpose of political repression. The term "police riot" was popularized after its use in the Walker Report, which investigated the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to describe the "unrestrained and indiscriminate" violence that the police "inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat."
A sponge grenade is a riot control weapon, intended to be non-lethal, which is fired from a 40 mm grenade launcher to cause confusion, or otherwise temporarily disable its target. As a single blunt force object, it is best used when aimed at a particular individual.
"Skunk" is a malodorant, non-lethal weapon used for crowd control by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and marketed to militaries and law enforcement around the world. It was developed and is manufactured by Odortec, with two supporting companies, Man and Beit-Alfa Technologies. The liquid's strong odor is marketed as an improvement over other crowd control weapons (CCWs) such as rubber bullets and tear gas used by the IDF against Palestinian protestors. The IDF is criticized for its tactics during deployment, including common use against people, businesses, and neighborhoods not involved in protests as a form of collective punishment.
The Beitunia killings refers to the consecutive killings of two Palestinian teenagers, which took place on the occasion of the annual Nakba day protests on May 15, 2014, near the Israeli Ofer Prison outside Beitunia in the occupied West Bank. Israel described the protest as a riot in which a crowd refused to disperse, and initially denied responsibility, saying the cause of the deaths was unknown, the deaths were faked, that video clips of the killings either failed to capture the violence of the scene shortly before, or might have been manipulated, that soldiers had been provoked and that only rubber bullets had been fired.
The Ferguson unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, involved protests and riots beginning on August 10, 2014, the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. The unrest sparked a vigorous debate in the United States about the relationship between law enforcement officers and African Americans, the militarization of police, and the use-of-force law in Missouri and nationwide. Continued activism expanded the issues to include modern-day debtors prisons, for-profit policing, and school segregation.
Militarization of police refers to the use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement officers. This includes the use of armored personnel carriers (APCs), assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. The militarization of law enforcement is also associated with intelligence agency-style information gathering aimed at the public and political activists, and a more aggressive style of law enforcement. Criminal justice professor Peter Kraska has defined militarization of police as "the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model."
Crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir is a public security practice to prevent and manage violent riots. It is enforced by police forces through laws preventing unlawful assembly, as well as using riot control agents such as tear gas, chili grenades, and pellet guns.
On June 1, 2020, David McAtee, an African-American man, was fatally shot by the Kentucky National Guard in Louisville during protests over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The city of Seattle is experiencing ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd. Beginning on May 29, 2020, demonstrators took to the streets throughout the city for marches and sit-ins, often of a peaceful nature but which also devolved into riots. Participants expressed opposition to systemic racism, police brutality and violence against people of color.
Violence and other controversies have occurred during the George Floyd protests, an ongoing series of protests and unrest which began in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States on May 26, 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Department officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest as two other officers looked on and another prevented people from intervening. Local protests in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area quickly spread nationwide in more than 2,000 cities and towns, as well as over 60 countries internationally in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
References
- 1 2 3 Jon Swaine (12 August 2014). "Missouri police fired wooden bullets at crowd during protest over teen's death". The Guardian.
- 1 2 "LESS LETHAL FORCE: Proposed Standards for Massachusetts Law Enforcement Agencies" (PDF). American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
- ↑ History: Wooden Bullets, Trailblazersww2.org
- ↑ McNichols, Joshua (19 November 2019). "A cop shot this wooden bullet at me at the WTO protests in Seattle. Here's the story it tells". Kuow.org. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
- ↑ Barry Adams, On Wisconsin: Wooden bullet helps researchers make affordable shelters, Madison.com, 11 May 2014
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