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 |  Subject: Less-Lethal Weapons Blind, Maim and Kill. Victims Say Enough Is Enough by Kaiser Health News in News on July 27, 2020 6:30 AM  Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:53 am | |
| There's a gap in Scott Olsen's memory for the night of Oct. 25, 2011.
The Iraq War vet remembers leaving his tech job in the San Francisco Bay Area and taking a BART train to join an Occupy Oakland protest against economic and social inequality.
He remembers standing near protesters who faced off with Oakland police officers bristling with riot gear.
He remembers being carried away by other protesters.
But not the moment when a "bean bag" round fired from an officer's 12-gauge shotgun crashed into the left side of his head, fracturing his skull and inflicting a near-fatal brain injury that forced him to relearn how to talk.
What happened to Olsen was not unique or isolated. Time and again over the past two decades ― from L.A. to D.C., Minneapolis to Miami ― peace officers have targeted civilian demonstrators with munitions designed to stun and stop, rather than kill. As many as 60 protesters suffered head wounds during recent Black Lives Matter events, including bone fractures, blindness and traumatic brain injuries.
For years, activists and civil libertarians worldwide have urged police to ban less-lethal projectiles from use for crowd control. The United Kingdom ceased using them that way decades ago.
But an investigation by USA Today and KHN found little has changed over the years in the United States.
Beyond the Constitution and federal court rulings that require police use of force to be "reasonable," there are no national rules for discharging bean bags and rubber bullets. Nor are there standards for the weapons' velocity, accuracy or safety. Congress and state legislatures have done little to offer solutions.
While locations and demonstration types vary, a pattern has emerged: Shooting victims file lawsuits, cities pay out millions of dollars, police departments try to adopt reforms. And, a few years later, it happens again. Law enforcement officers, typically with limited training, are bound only by departmental policies that vary from one agency to the next.
Sometimes referred to as kinetic impact projectiles, less-lethal ammunition includes bean bags (nylon sacks filled with lead shot), so-called rubber bullets that actually are tipped with foam or sponge and paintball-like rounds containing chemical irritants. Velocity and range vary greatly, but they can travel upwards of 200 mph. The rounds were developed to save lives by giving police a knock-down option that can disable threats from a safe distance without killing the target.
But, over decades of use, munitions that originally were touted as safe and nonlethal have proven otherwise:
- In 2000, a protester at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles lost an eye. Seven years later in the same city, scores of migrant-rights demonstrators were wounded amid a fusillade of less-lethal rounds.
- In 2001, when rioting broke out in Tucson after the University of Arizona lost the NCAA men's basketball championship game, a student lost an eye to a bean bag.
- In 2003, 58 people were injured in Oakland when officers launched a barrage of wooden pellets and other devices during anti-Iraq War protests. To settle court claims, the city adopted new crowd control policies. Eight years later, Olsen was struck down.
- In 2004, in Boston, a college student celebrating a Red Sox victory was killed by a projectile filled with pepper-based irritant when it tore through her eye and into her brain.
The past two months have been especially telling, with dozens maimed or hurt amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations: Photographer Linda Tirado, 37, lost an eye after being hit by a foam projectile in Minneapolis. Brandon Saenz, 26, lost an eye and several teeth after being hit with a "sponge round" in Dallas. Leslie Furcron, 59, was placed in a medically induced coma after she was shot between the eyes with a bean bag round in La Mesa, California. And, in Portland, Oregon, 26-year-old Donavan La Bella suffered facial and skull fractures when he was shot by a federal officer with a less-lethal round.
"Nothing has changed," said attorney Elizabeth Ritter, 59, one of several people shot in the head by an impact munition at a 2003 protest in Miami. A video later surfaced showing police supervisors laughing about her shooting. "It's fairly sickening to me. We have a systemic, deeply ingrained problem."
https://laist.com/2020/07/27/less-lethal_weapons_blind_maim_and_kill_victims_say_enough_is_enough.php |
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