This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
News Taser Creates New Crowd Control Weapon
Posted by Matt Davis on Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 10:48 AM
Evidently anticipating all the rioting that's going to be occurring in the Great Depression II, Taser International has invented a new weapon for 2009. The Taser Shockwave:
Unlike the Tasers currently being used by police departments around the country, the Shockwave features six electrified charges, not one, and is designed to target more than one person at once:
Use Shockwave defensively to create a perimeter around rioters, as police demonstrated in a training exercise on California's Treasure Island earlier this month, and a mob of unruly individuals can be corralled into a corner. Or fire the device into a crowd, and several targets go down in a temporarily paralyzed heap.
Taser says cops need more protection from dangerous heathens as they face down the end of days, but civil rights activists say the new weapon is more likely to be used simply as a crowd control measure to suppress people's first amendment rights.
The idea of "less lethal" weaponry has been circulating in law enforcement for a while. I can't help feeling it's the result of Taser's aggressive public relations strategy. Many cops employ the Taser judiciously, but there are instances where cops are employing Tasers where they wouldn't have otherwise shot a resisting suspect. In the hands of some officers, the Taser isn't "less lethal," but arguably, more lazy. A dangerous substitute for simply talking to the guy.
But don't let any of this fool you into thinking I'm some biased lefty from what Sarah Palin calls the "mainstream media." Personally, I look forward to the day when all the world's problems can be solved with little electric shocks. Or gas. No, wait...
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This is what a taser in the hand of some cops can do for the homeless population:
http://www.nowheretolayhishead.org/fearoft…
Nothing to worry about. The Third Infantry Division deployed in the US this month to "help people at home." I'm sure they could use something like this.
There's a lot of non lethal weapons in development right now that could prove to change the way law enforcement and the military do their jobs. I heard about one on Mythbusters and read about it online that is going to be a taser, but work with water to provide multiple charges with no reload time. Crazy...
How about weaponized THC? Can we all agree on that one as a more humane incapacitating agent? Seems like something Portland could get behind.
[ http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/92049… ]
The future: Taser vs. dynamite. Loser: Taser
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