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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Despite risks which include permanent hearing loss, LRADs are increasingly part of police's crowd control arsenal
After a wait of nearly ten months, MuckRock has finally received documents from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department regarding their response to the protests surrounding President Donald Trump's inauguration early this year. Surprisingly, while we didn't receive any records related to the J20 protests, we did receive documents relating to January 21st's Women's March, which in Washington D.C. alone attracted by conservative estimates between 450,000 and 500,000 people. While it was the largest protest in the city since the anti-Vietnam War protests of the '60s and '70s, no arrests were made.
The After-Action Report provided by the DCMPD, under the header "Improvements," contains the information that the department utilized both a D.C. National Guard Jump Team, and a Long Range Acoustical Device, better known as an LRAD. The LRAD was used "to assist in instructing the crowd flows on continuing to flow away from the entrances of the stations."
Since the first documented use of an LRAD sound cannon on protesters by Pittsburgh Police during the 2009 G20 summit, LRAD use by police against activists appears to be on the rise. The Pittsburgh Police Bureau used it again in 2011 during the Super Bowl, the New York Police Department has used it several times including the Eric Garner protests and during Occupy, the Oakland Police Department also used it against Occupy protesters, and more recently and perhaps most prominently, an LRAD was deployed during the Ferguson unrest and the Standing Rock protests.
There are various models of LRAD, with military grade versions that can send voice communications up to 5.5 miles away, and slightly less powerful versions like the LRAD 500X or 300X which are what police departments generally use. All can produce a sound somewhat akin to a high-powered car alarm that can cause intense headaches, nausea, loss of balance, and potentially permanent hearing loss.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday December 29 2017, @02:28AM
I sure haven't: In a substantial majority of elections I've been able to vote in, I either voted for a candidate that ended up losing, or the election was not even contested. So I do not in fact get what I voted for. I continue to vote, and I continue to do my best to make my preferred candidates win, on the advice given by Eugene Debs: "It's better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it."
Also, LRADs have been (probably illegally) deployed against protesters since at least the 2004 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, and have been used by law enforcement agencies under the control of both Republicans and Democrats. Neither major party is in favor of unrestricted right of protest, which means that you have a very hard time voting for a government that supports what I want.
I view it as a symptom of something very different:
Most people basically want the government to create an environment that allows them to get the following: A comfortable-enough home. Decent food. A doctor when they get sick. A job that doesn't abuse them too badly and pays them enough to manage reasonably well. Streets safe from crime. A decent chance their kids' lives will be better than their own. An ability to have some kind of leisure life, whether that's a couple of drinks at the pub on Thursday night, a religious community they find fulfilling, or a show or sports team they can watch.
When the "moderate" politicians get most people most of that, they dominate (e.g. the US in 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was easily re-elected but both Democrats and Republicans were quite moderate). When the "moderate" politicians fail to get most people most of that, they lose out to the "extremists" as the public thrashes about looking for anyone offering any hope of getting what they want (e.g. Germany in 1930, when the Nazis made substantial electoral gains in the wake of massive unemployment and inflation).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.