[Philorandroid]

Are chemical irritants preferable, then? Or just LEOs in riot gear with rubber batons? There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane, and the mindset of "I'll turn violent and/or destructive if my participation in civil unrest is punished" is a perfect justification for these systems to exist.

[mrob]

>Are chemical irritants preferable

Absolutely. You can heal from those. LRADs are maiming weapons designed to cause permanent damage. Under any reasonable legal system their use would be considered a war crime.

[kortilla]

LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm.

There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people.

https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...

[consteval]

I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.

Just intuitively, I know many people with degraded hearing from concerts. And that hearing is gone, that’s how hearing loss works.

I think the people who designed these weapons aren’t anywhere close to stupid enough to think these won’t cause long term damage. Which means that the only explanation is they INTEND for them to cause long term damage.

[kortilla]

Check out the link I posted. It’s from a physicians group focused on human rights.

> I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.

Being a doctor and understanding that the levels people are exposed are not maiming if the thing is used “by design” should carry some significant weight in how you think about this.

[mrob]

They are designed to produce sound pressure levels that cause permanent hearing damage from short exposure, which makes them maiming weapons. There is no safe way to use an LRAD. Anybody who uses an LRAD is evil. Stop making excuses for despicable behavior. Deliberately causing hearing damage is no better than smashing people's fingers with hammers.

[kortilla]

They are not designed to cause hearing damage and the link I posted saying as much is a from a physicians org for human rights.

Speaking in hyperbole is counter productive to thoughtful discussion

[mrob]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples

Threshold of pain: 120-140 dB(SPL)

Risk of instantaneous noise-induced hearing loss: 120dB(SPL)

A sonic weapon must cause pain to be effective. Any sound that reliably causes pain is capable of causing instant hearing damage. Therefore any sonic weapon is necessarily a maiming weapon and is designed as such. There is no hyperbole.

[int_19h]

160 dB way over hearing safe. Most rifle rounds are in >140 dB territory, and that is quite sufficient to give you permanent hearing damage.

[Aloisius]

That's peak power at 1 meter for a large LRAD, not what someone 75 or 100 meters away experiences.

[mrob]

There will be some attenuation, but the output is focused into a beam, so you don't get the usual inverse square falloff with distance.

[ty6853]

You do, there is just a greater gain factor constant.

[numpad0]

The point is that LRADs are supposed to be an ethical alternative to guns and gases, as far as the original design intent is considered...

[mrob]

As LRADs are less ethical than CS gas, the true design intent is likely to produce something that looks insignificant on video recordings so it can be used as extrajudicial punishment of undesirables with less risk of public outcry.

[fazeirony]

this. and let's not forget that these....officers always receive the best, most top notch training to use these things safely. (/s)

yet another reason to ensure footage looks like 'nothing terrible happened to these people' as expertly trained cop uses a weapon of war against civilians.

[giraffe_lady]

> There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane

I mean you're talking about using violence against people to stop or prevent property damage. Most options are off the table in the moment, in the same way you can't execute someone if you catch them vandalizing your car. Smashing their fingers with a hammer wouldn't probably kill them but you can't do that either.

After-the-fact repercussions like criminal charges or civil liabilities, well, it doesn't matter how they feel about it? That's not how court works.

[Philorandroid]

This reads like you suppose the only thing to do is let rioters vent their outrage against whatever objects happen to be in their way at the time, and hope that there exists some legal comeuppance after the fact.

Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used to prevent property damage? What moral dilemma exists that makes protecting property deserve a comparison to executing someone?

[ImPostingOnHN]

> Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used to prevent property damage?

It can, of course. If a police officer sees an individual engaging in property damage, that officer may walk over to that person and arrest them. If that person resists arrest, the officer can use appropriate force.

If you're talking about using force against innocent individuals who happen to be nearby, of course that is both outrageous and out of the question.

[immibis]

Outrageous, out of the question, and practiced at 99.9% of protests that disagree with the government's foreign policy.

[fc417fc802]

> Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used

No one said that. It was suggested that physically injuring someone in direct retaliation for property damage wasn't appropriate. Add to that the fact that riot control measures are hardly targeted.

There are many non-violent options available. Sometimes rioters will escalate violently against the officers carrying those out. It's far less likely anyone objects to proportionate and necessary use of force in such cases.

[Philorandroid]

If threat of injury is what stops someone from destroying your car, then it's appropriately leveraged.

I'm also curious, what kind of effective, 'non-violent' means are there to control the initial mob-martyrs, and ensure level-handed justice is served? Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so.

[fc417fc802]

Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me.

> Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so.

As I previously pointed out, once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted use of force. That's quite different than a paramilitary force lashing out violently at anyone perceived to be up to no good.

[consteval]

Also important to note, most of the riots I have seen don’t start with the protesters escalating. It depends on the country, but based off of what I have seen, it is almost always the authority who escalates. Often, there is preemptive and disproportionate riot control.

[Philorandroid]

> Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me.

My disagreement is that the ongoing or imminent unlawful destruction of property should be allowed to be met with _appropriate_ deterring force, whether by law enforcement or by the property owners. I argue that because in a system of individual rights that include property ownership, the position that an impassioned crowd has more right to that property than the owner (by damaging or destroying it in this case) is morally indefensible.

> once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted use of force.

That is untrue for at least the last decade or so. After the 2015 Baltimore riots, President Obama couldn't even popularly get away with referring to rioters as "thugs"[1] after ~300 businesses were damaged, 60 buildings set on fire, 113 police officers injured and 27 drugstores looted. Since then, there have been plentiful riots and mass demonstrations that either turned violent or otherwise sheltered violent activity, including the moment in 2020 that spawned the "mostly peaceful protests" meme of the reporter with a building burning down behind him because of the rose-tinted glasses public analysts used in their coverage. Mayors and governors gave lip service to violent demonstrations like CHAZ/CHOP [2] while violence was taking place, and only tepidly supported law enforcement's presence to curtail it after the fact.

_To this day_ those actions are routinely and popularly dismissed as racial outrage, justified, etc. largely along political boundaries, all to the detriment of the thousands of individuals whose livelihoods were damaged or destroyed as result. The idea that good consciences will win the day and protestors will distance themselves from n'er-do-wells among them is, as a standard, irreconcilable with the countless recorded hours of protest footage that exist.

Rights aren't trumped by implicit public vote to destroy your property, any more than two thieves can vote that they need their victim's wallet more than them, or a gang of rapists can hold a 5-1 vote for consent. QED, immediate and active threats against property should, morally and legally, warrant an appropriate amount of force to defend it.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/us/baltimore-riots-thug-n-wor... [2] https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/chop-seattle-mayor-walks-b...

[tehjoker]

maybe the government should consider protestor demands and reform in many cases