I have been listening to and reading numerous articles and regarding police action and intervention during the (newest) “LA riots” and now civil unrest in Denver. Most of these reports seem to be either uneducated or dramatic. Either way they are not entirely factual. My guess is because for these incidents, facts can get in the way of a great (money making) news story.
Reading some of the comments that seem to come up on social media platforms, LinkedIn being one of them displays a pattern, at least to me, of some lack of knowledge regarding less lethal munitions. So, in the interest of conversation and hopefully clarification (to some) I thought I would share my knowledge in less lethal or less than lethal Munition deployments.
There is a difference between an unlawful assembly and a full-scale riot. As you can guess, an unlawful assembly is generally deemed peaceful with citizens exercising their 1st amendment rights BUT their demonstration is impeding traffic flow, pedestrian flow and has not been permitted. This usually requires police assistance in re-directing the protesters out of the street and making sure non-participating individuals can move about and through the protest without being obstructed.
Riots on the other hand we all know are violent, causing injuries to law enforcement personnel and others, cause destruction of property, grind commerce to a halt and disrupt societal expectations of emergency services responding to other calls for service.
It’s when unlawful assemblies start to fray into more riotous behavior that deployment of less lethal munitions are authorized.
Types of munitions- Flexible and non-flexible. Flexible being, bean bags, semi hard foam material (we call them Blue Nose or Orange Nose) or rubber (pellets). Non-flexible being, wooden dowels, harder rubber dowels or plastic. Obviously, the non-flexible can cause serious injuries or even death however, that’s not to say that flexible munitions cannot. Non-flexible are ‘skip fired’ if used against people or direct fired if needed to breech a window or such. Flexible can be direct fired at people with certain use of force factors considered. Using either on a human, having a munition penetrate a limb or torso, unless deliberately using it as a lethal force option, is the least desirable.
Any officers that use or fire these munitions should have absolutely been through a certifying user course and be under supervision authority to use them. Meaning an officer has no authority to observe a group of people, call it an unlawful assembly (on his/her own) and then start firing off less lethal projectiles into the crowd! There should never be a case of an untrained/ non-certified officer using these munitions or deployment weapons. [Canton v. Harris] comes to mind.
Further regarding use of force factors. An officer or operator that is deploying either kind of less lethal rounds MUST take into consideration all of the following without exception;
1. Distance to target (closer to the target can result in serious bodily injuries), what type of individuals are within the crowd. Are there children, babies, elderly, handicap? This is not or never a “play stupid games win stupid prizes” scenario!
What is the accuracy of the munition that I am about to deploy? If you have read my other posts then you know what I think about ‘collateral damage’ in police work. Does it happen, yes it does. Should it be avoided by preplanning and awareness and forecasting? Yes, absolutely. An officer cannot fire a munition that is known to the operator to be less than accurate at a specific target, strike a unintentional target and then shrug their shoulders and say “well never mind”.
Is my choice of munition going to get me the desired results, that being crowd disbursement and ‘incident over’ or am I about to create additional issues or injuries. There can be specific individuals targeted but with that there are specific areas ON those individuals that should be targeted as well. Areas that will give an officer maximum effect with lowering the potential for S.B.I.
Can I get medical attention to people in need after deployment.
There is NOT another set of use of force standards or a hidden Graham v. Connor style case law that allows for Unreasonable use of force, just because it’s a riotous situation. There have been numerous case laws and civil payouts regarding officers misusing less lethal (Denver PD).
I certainly don’t want to see any first responders hurt and I personally detest riotous behavior but I have considered myself (one of many) a protector of our Freedom Documents and unless we want a completely different kind of country, the edges of those most sacred documents CANNOT be frayed, even if there is a disagreement raging.
If there is some interest in this, my next post can cover gas munition deployment.
I would very much like to hear your opinions on gas munitions deployment. Thank you for a very educational post.