-
- The original development of riot weapons goes back to
Paris before the first World War, where the police began chemical crowd
control using bombs filled with ethyl bromoacetate, an early form of teargas.
The British colonies proved to be the forcing ground for the wide range
of chemical and kinetic impact weapons which followed. The irritant CS
for example was first used in Cyprus in 1956, and between 1960 and 1965,
CN and CS were used on 124 occasions in the colonies. (Ackroyd et al, 1977).The
growing demands of counter-insurgency and urban warfare generated a first
generation of new riot weapons serviced by a growing police industrial
complex.
-
- Thus plastic and rubber bullets were products of British
colonial experience in Hong Kong where the flying wooden teak baton round
became the template for future kinetic weapons. The concept was one of
a flying truncheon which could disperse a crowd without using small arms.
They were however regarded as too dangerous for use on white people, so
in 1969, Porton Down came up with a 'safer' version for use in Northern
Ireland in 1970. Just as plastic bullets were considered far too dangerous
for use in mainland Britain until 1985 when they proliferated throughout
the UK's police forces,so were wooden baton rounds regarded as too dangerous
for the residents of Northern Ireland but not Hong Kong. Now plastic bullets
have been deployed in virtually every continent from the USA to Argentina,
from South Africa to Israel and China. Obviously, the shift in whether
or not a riot weapon was appropriate or safe had nothing to do with differences
in physiology. Wooden and plastic baton rounds created injuries which did
not take account of generation or race. A predominant concern appears to
have been what can be portrayed as politically safe in a particular context.
-
- The seductive notion of soft and gentle knockout weapons
is recent but not new. It has its roots back in the 1970's when so called
'non-lethal' weapons formed the holy grail of riot weapon Research &
Development. During that decade, then Congressman James Scheur outlined
a new philosophy of crowd control weapons.(see Fig.26). He saw such developments
resulting from 'spinoffs from medical, military, aerospace and industrial
research' and expressed the view that: 'We are now in the process of developing
devices and products capable of controlling violent individuals and entire
mobs without injury.'53 The veracity of this assessment is briefly examined
below, particularly the assertion that control is achieved without harm.
-
- Some idea of the range and variety of riot control weapons
under consideration at that time can be gleaned from the 1972 US National
Science Foundation's Report on Non-lethal Weapons. (NSF, 1972). Altogether
it listed 34 different weapons, including chemical and kinetic weapons;
electrified water jets; combined stroboscopic light and pulsed sound weapons;
infrasound weapons; dartguns which fire drug-filled flight stabilized syringes;
stench parts which give off an obnoxious odour; the taser which fires two
small electrical contacts discharging 50,000 volts into the target; and
instant banana peel which makes roads so slippery, they are impassable.
-
- Many of these weapons were then only partly developed
or had problems of public acceptability:others have since achieved operational
status. They include: incapacitation weapons such as the electronic riot
shields and electro-shock batons (discussed in Sections 6, 7, & 8 below);
Bulk chemical irritant distributor systems, (delivered by watercannon such
as the UK made Tactica or the many back pack sprays like those made by
the Israeli company Ispra (Fig.27 or the German Heckler 8 Koch (Fig. 28);
New forms of irritant such as OC (or peppergas); kinetic impact weapons
like the German & UK plastic bullet guns (shown in Fig. 32) or the
South African hydraulically fired, TFM Slingshot rubber bullet machine;
biomedical weapons, such as the compressed air fired drug syringe now commercially
available both in the US & China (shown in Fig. 33).
-
- The range of weapons currently deployed for crowd control
is vast indeed and defies any attempts to be comprehensive. In Britain,
since the first use of CS gas, rubber bullets and water cannon at the beginning
of the Northern Irish Conflict in 1969, there has been a globalisation
of such public order technologies. To our knowledge some 856 companies
across 47 countries have been or are currently active in the manufacture
and supply of such weapons. This proliferation has been fuelled by private
companies wishing to tap lucrative security markets, a process which has
led to both vertical and horizontal proliferation of this technology. (See
Appendix 1 [not provided with report]) For example, one company, Civil
Defence Supply, who provide nearly all UK police forces with sidehandled
batons, boast of an international riot training programme, having trained
the entire Mexican Police Granaderos with armadillo linked riot shields,
CS and baton firing guns like the Arwen and what they call the complete
'Early Resolution System', for its elite forces.
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