https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/1...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
CS gas[1] is one of the more commonly deployed ones in the United States. At least one paper[2] associates CS gas with long term heart and lung damage.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_gas
[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20653665_Tear_Gas-H...
People are angry for a reason, Trevor Noah did a great part on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c
Basically the white/rich majority and the police in the US has broken their end of the societal contract for decades and now people are fed up enough.
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/rubberplasticbulle...
https://old.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/guy6ln...
[1] https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/05/31/us-law-e...
It's largely a solved problem, and has been since the 70's. The cops in the US just don't use those tools and tactics.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
(Or at least use excessive force without regard for the presence of children: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-georgia-cops-critically-... )
where is a good tear gas source?
When I was at school they[0] brought round a rubber bullet (I presume it was a plastic bullet actually but they called it rubber). It was a light grey, featureless cylinder, flat at both ends, at least as my memory has it. It was surprisingly light, seemed to have barely any heft at all.
We were told it was the very bullet that killed a protester in northen ireland.
[0] I can't remember who 'they' were, an ant-violence group I guess.
Please take a look at the linked article (and HN comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23385741) and note that the Federal "Kerner Commission, which was formed in 1967 to specifically investigate urban riots, found that police action was pivotal in starting half of the 24 riots the commission studied in detail."
Today we can see ample evidence of police escalating use-of-force (rubber bullets, tear gas, batons, etc.) on peaceful protesters.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...
Specifically, not gassing a crowd for no reason.
https://twitter.com/izaacmellow/status/1267679820600668161?s...
So unlike many (most?) HNers I have actual personal experience with it.
Why are you assuming HNers are not politically active? I've been tear gassed 6 times since last Friday and this is not my first rodeo. I have a bunch of use gas grenades sitting on my desk whose manufacturers I'm tracing right now.
Your military training experience is good as far as it goes, and I have heard similar stores from many police officers, but it seems to me you are overlooking many factors. You were selected for physical fitness and toughness before being admitted to military training and you knew that however unpleasant the experience that it was a controlled setting supervised by experienced people with full medical facilities and personnel available if anything went wrong.
Imagine yourself part of a small crowd of people of mixed experience, age, mobility, and physical health. Some are prepared with masks or respirators, eye protection, and full-body clothing, others are in casual wear like shorts and t-shirts. You and they are standing on the sidewalk around an intersection, occasionally someone shouts an opinion or a few people chant something but mostly people are quiet. Halfway down each block is a line of police in riot gear with gas masks. At an order from their sergeant a grenadier on one street fires two or three small CS gas grenades toward where the street meets the intersection. People run or walk briskly away from that line of police and around the corner. Most are OK although a few are not handling it well and need help breathing or rinsing their eyes. Next the police farther up that street fire a couple of grenades at the street, causing the crowd to change direction. Some run across the street, if they can. The police on the 3rd and 4th streets repeat the process and now about half the crowd is off the sidewalk and in the intersection. Police throw a larger combination CS gas grenade into the middle of the intersection which explodes with a 175 dB bang, a bright flash of light, and a much larger and thicker cloud of CS gas. While everyone is variously indisposed, the lines of police move from down each block right up to the intersection, penning the crowd in from all sides. Than a recorded message is played declaring an illegal assembly because so many people have departed the sidewalk.
The stated cause for this action was that some minutes earlier, when 2 streets were still open down to the next intersection, an unknown person drove up to and through the intersection, dinged another car, and down the street at a dangerous speed before making a sharp turn and driving away. It's unclear to me why this was considered the fault of the people standing on the sidewalk. This happened about 36 hours ago in the Bay Area. Here are two short videos captured early in the process.
https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266987708854923265
https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266988367905910784
You can always make up a scenario where a given approach or tool is the most economical and appropriate. It's a good diversion from the unpleasant facts of widespread inappropriate deployment that are happening now.
Wikipedia [1] says in the US 28.4 people per 10 million people are killed in the US by the police. In Germany this rate is at 1.3. In Europe all countries except for Malta and Luxembourg (no idea what's going on there) have a rate lower than 6 (or exactly 6 like Sweden). Regardless these killings are of course distressing, especially because if seems to often happen in connection with psychotic episodes of the victims [2]: "Police violence is well-documented in the United States, so well-documented that people, even in Germany, tend to think of the US first when they think of police violence. And also (from [2]):
> But here in Germany, there are people - and not just a few - who are killed in these encounters," Peter said. "It's a German problem, if on a much smaller scale than the US." > > Because US officers might kill or injure more people in a week than Germany's do in a year, police here are much more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt. "The cases of death that are reported here are not like in the US, where unarmed minorities are shot," Behr said. "As a rule, there is not an intent to kill," he added.
I have lived in both the US and Germany for a long time. In Germany I never feared for my life or to get hurt by the police (even on protests). This might be luck, sure, but I also don't know anyone who did. In the US I had multiple encounters where the police tried to bully me and make me feel uncomfortable (shouting aggressively, following me, pointing a gun at me for getting to them to ask a question, …). And I am regular white dude, who doesn't look scary.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/police-in-germany-kill-more-than-you-t...
Just wanted to "[point] out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned" and "[give a tiny bit] more information about the topic" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.) :/
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Not saying this is the way to go, just wanted to point out an interesting tidbit.
I found this with a web search just now: https://www.military.com/defensetech/2003/04/15/slippery-sol...
WARNING GRAPHIC NSFW https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article10267909/Demo...
