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by zenta 3415 days ago
Those FAQs/Facts are amusing.

> Myth: Law enforcement officers deployed concussion grenades resulting in the grievous injury to a protester’s arm.

> Fact: Law enforcement has at no time used concussion grenades during protest activities. Non-lethal munitions used include: impact sponge rounds, drag stabilizer bean bag rounds, riot control CS (tear gas) canister and water, Taser, and stinger balls, which are small rubber balls and CS gas emitted from the device. It makes a loud noise and emits small rubber balls which are meant to cause people to be startled and therefore disperse. It contains no shrapnel.

2 comments

Let me get this "Fact" straight. Law enforcement throws a "non-lethal munition" directly at a protester who subsequently loses her arm, but it was probably something else that just happened to coincide with the "non-lethal munition" explosion, and not their grenade? Right.
It would help your argument if you cited public records. Is there a news story, social media discussion, some other documentation of the incident? Do we know who was involved... was it law enforcement or private security? Was the protester in a space they legally had access to or had they moved onto privately owned land?
This is a Snopes news article, not a Fact Check entry. It has a lone author who only quotes "protester" accounts.
Ok, I'll try using Google again. This time I'll go with the NPR article because they're widely considered a reliable source:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503120449/...

They're even very clear as to who says what. Note, I never claimed to be providing a fact check entry. Rather, the post I was responding to requested, "Is there a news story, social media discussion, some other documentation of the incident?" The answer is, "yes, lots." Depending on where you source your news, you either heard about it a ton or heard about it none, but rarely in between.

Again, only protester accounts, claiming that police threw a weapon with which they weren't even equipped.

The punctured-tanks-as-weapons theory sounds credible, and I doubt any of those protesters could properly identify a concussion grenade if they saw one (nor could most people in the general population).

> Non-lethal munitions used include: impact sponge rounds, drag stabilizer bean bag rounds,

That's an interesting definition of "non-lethal". "Non-lethal" in this case apparently does not mean "cannot kill the target", because bean bag rounds absolutely can be lethal when shot at someone. They're shot fast enough that they can easily damage internal organs or even fracture your skull.

I believe they're actually called less-lethal.