Escalation of Force

I saw via Glenn last night that law enforcement in San Diego. The link to the original article is apparently overloaded at the moment, but Danger Room also covered the story:

"The [Long Range Acoustic Device] was stationed by San Diego County Sheriff deputies at a recent town hall forum hosted by Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) in Spring Valley and at a subsequent town hall with Congressman Darrell Issa (R-San Diego)," East Country Magazine reported after reviewing official records. It was also parked at a local sand-building competition along the beach.

Though the Long Range Acoustic Device can be used for hailing, it has also been employed as a weapon, most prominently in 2005 by a cruise ship, which used it to ward off attacking pirates. In fact, the device, which was developed after the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, is designed precisely for that sort of mission. It can permanently damage hearing, depending on how it's used.

Deploying the Long Range Acoustic Device to local events has provided ammunition to critics of Police Sheriff Bill Gore, who was the agent-in-charge of the FBI's infamous 1992 Ruby Ridge siege. In response to questions posed by East Country Magazine about use of the technology, Gore said that officers had the appropriate training and that the device's use as a deterrent is just a "precaution in case you need it."

I understand why law enforcement desires less-than-lethal solutions, and I also understand why they prefer to deploy these tools at a distance instead of at close range. The obvious hope—the "holy grail"—is a system that can help law enforcement control a situation and deescalate a threat without putting officers or their opposition at risk of suffering permanent injury or death. A system that creates separation is presumably thought to reduce the inherent risk of short-range confrontations.

But is an LRAD an acceptable tool for use for non-violent domestic crowd control?

While I can see an obvious need for systems that make keep potentially heavily-armed crowds at a distance in foreign theaters of combat, I'm at a loss to explain why domestic law enforcement agencies feel the need to deploy acoustic weapons that have the potential to create permanent physical damage in situations where no reasonable person expects the level of violence that could justify such a system.

The deployment of an LRAD in the situation as described seems to be an unwarranted escalation of force from law enforcement, one that poses a significant simultaneous threat of permanent injury to large numbers of people. It has the potential to be used as a communications tool, or a weapon as indiscriminate as a claymore mine.

My gut reaction s that full-power military grade LRADs do not belong in the hands of civilian law enforcement at benign public gatherings any more than fully-automatic M4s do, and that having such systems in place will only encourage agitators to bring weaponry sufficient to counter these systems, putting the population at large at a much great risk than there would have been if LRADs was never introduced to the situation at all.