CROWD CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES - Omega Research Foundation

the bottle, there is still time for the European Union to develop consistent and appropriate structures of
accountability. Pugwash considered that )each of the emerging less-lethal weapons technologies
required urgent examination and that their development or adoption should be subject to public
review(. 376 The process should be transparent, adaptable and open to public and political scrutiny.
Any class of technology shown to be excessively injurious, cruel, inhumane or indiscriminate, should be
either prohibited or subject to stringent and democratic controls.
7. AN APPRAISAL OF LESS DAMAGING ALTERNATIVES.
7.1 Crowd Control Technologies and Social Contexts. From the arguments presented above, it is
clear that the innovation, deployment and overall accountability regarding the use of crowd control
weapons in Europe is inconsistent and subject to differing levels of both regulation and control. There
are tremendous commercial pressures coming from crowd control weapon manufacturers urging
governments to buy newer, more advanced forms of crowd control technology. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the United States, where the wild west gun culture yields 30,000 murders each year
and over 100,000 people injured by gunshot wounds. 377 Much of this American crowd control
technology overlaps with new US military non lethal technologies and consequentially developments
within NATO. Thus the new NATO doctrine about using so called non-lethal warfare now means
civilians and combatants are intentionally targeted with the same weaponry. Some of these are claimed
to be less damaging but how can we know?
It is obvious that America has peculiar problems associated with the prevalence of firearms
amongst the citizenry under rights guaranteed by their constitution. Although US police have been
shown to be more than capable of misusing riot weapons when used against crowds such as the WTO
demonstrations held in Seattle in November 1999, it is undeniable that US police officers do have to
deal with armed hostage and barricade situations on a daily basis. In those situations, the use of lessthan
lethal weapons may be an entirely appropriate alternative to the use of lethal firearms. 378
However, it is questionable whether European police forces would, or should, want to import the
)gangster cop( mentality that has accompanied some of the tactics evolved in the US to deal with this
level of violent behaviour. What are the alternatives? In many respects, the United States is oddly
insular and inward looking. It is hard to think of a European Member State where such a large
proportion of the population does not possess a passport, which is reportedly the situation in America.
Outside of the present Austrian government 379 most Europeans would find it inconceivable that
constitutional rights could protect racist and xenophobic propaganda as freedoms of speech, as they
are in the US under the 1st Amendment. Racist policing can become systemic without appropriate
accountability. A serious lack of police accountability has allowed certain officers from forces such as
the Los Angeles Police Department to shoot innocent citizens, plant evidence, engage in bank robbery,
rape, practice interrogation methods that have been categorised as torture and award each other
celebratory plaques for certain kinds of killings. 380
Thankfully, this is not civilisation as we know it - yet. There are good reasons for drawing back from
the notion that Corporate America should programme European policing methods for crowd control,
which it will if the status quo regarding the acquisition and deployment of crowd control weapons is
allowed to continue in the current under-questioned, under-managed, under-licensed, under-regulated
and under-accountable manner. This is not to suggest the issue of crowd control weapons is without
complexity. What this study does assert is that the dangers of such weaponry being used to undermine
)due process( are so high, given the second generation of products now entering service in the USA,
that a certain degree of circumspections is required.
7.2 The Need for Social Impact Assessments. Before the advent of Rachel Carsons classic book
Silent Spring, 381 the tremendous impact that industrial and pesticide pollutants were having on the
environment and our food chain were simply not realized. One early response of that awareness of the
unforseen social impacts of science and technology was the US Congress setting up the forerunner to
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