Listen Up Or Get Zapped!

Listen Up Or Get Zapped!

[This was originally published in the February 2007 edition of The Bridge
http://www.bridgenews.org
their web site was not up and working as of March 18, 2007.]

Cambridge Police Commissioner Ron Watson wants to acquire Electro-Muscular Disruption Technology -- called stun guns or TASERs. There is a large family of less-lethal weapons. The report of the December 12, 2006 meeting of the Public Safety Committee was unavailable as of the deadline for publication.
The Cambridge City Council remains silent about three recent police abuses: (1) 19 murders and other crimes by FBI informants in Boston; (2) the murder by Cambridge police of Daniel Furtado in his own home contrary to law. He was an elderly man with a disability. (3) The FBI frame-up of four Boston men for murder, whose trial is going on now.
The police want to use high tech electrical weapons to control civilians. The City Council shows no indication that it will hold the police accountable for any abuses. The City Manager defers to the Police Commissioner. The City Council is either in a coma when it comes to police abuses or they accept the false assurances of the Healy-Rossi autocracy.
The Council is clueless about electrical weapons. The Council ignored my complaints for 16 years about high tech electrical weapons being used in Cambridge. The City tolerates harassment using such weapons for provocations for punishment and to intentionally inflict emotional and psychological stress on vulnerable citizens.
“The Arizona Republic, [...] identified 167 cases in the United States and Canada of death following a police Taser strike since September 1999.” (Robert Anglen, “167 cases of death following stun-gun use,” The Arizona Republic, January 5, 2006) Tasers “are used by almost 10,000 police departments in the United States, and internationally.” A study showed that shocks from the guns cause the hearts of healthy pigs to stop beating.”
Tasers fire barbs up to 35 feet, “delivering a 50,000 volt shock. [...] Tasers are not regulated by the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms or any other federal agency.” “Nationally, more than 100,000 police officers carry Tasers. [...] human rights groups and scientists have questioned their safety. [...] The company’s primary safety studies [...] consist of shocks administered to one pig and five dogs.” (Monica Davey and Alex Berenson, “Chicago Rethinks Its Use of Stun Guns,” New York Times, February 12, 2005, page 9)
“Britain has not approved Tasers for general police use. [...] A Canadian study found that it might cause cardiac arrest in people with heart conditions.” Police “volunteers usually receive a single shock of a half-second or less. In the field Tasers automatically fire for five seconds. [...] And suspects are often hit repeatedly.” “Taser has significantly overstated the weapon’s safety, say biomedical engineers [...] Its name stands for ‘Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle.’ [...] its current can jump through two inches of clothing.” “In June [2004] alone, six people died.” (Alex Berenson, “As Police Use of Tasers Soars, Questions Over Safety Emerge,” New York Times, July 18, 2004, page one)
“Recently, police officers in Miami shocked a 6-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl in separate incidents. One man “died after [...] an officer stunned him nine times with a TASER, and he wasn’t on drugs or alcohol [...] by the count of CBS News 10 [people died after being TASERed] in August [2004].” (“TASER Danger?” CBS NEWS, October 12, 2004)
“Gan Golan of Los Angeles, a protest veteran and recent MIT grad who did his thesis on the increasing use of such devices [...] contends ‘The fact that these weapons are called “Less Lethal” only makes them more likely to be used.’ And they can still be lethal. A Boston Red Sox fan [Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove] celebrating a 2004 playoff victory died after a pepper spray projectile hit her in the eye. She wasn't even protesting anything.” (Marty Levine, “Amongst Their Weaponry ... are fear, but no surprise, when it comes to policing protestors,” Pittsburgh City Paper, MARCH 30, 2006) URL for this story: http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A19277
The Omega Foundation and the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University at Bradford in the UK [in 2004] have both released studies that highlight the dangers and deaths associated with all less than lethal weapons. These studies have emphasized the dangers associated with these weapons and made recommendations for their safe use that have so far been ignored by the US media and US law enforcement. Other less than lethal weapons are being used and newer products are coming on to the market all the time. When these weapons are used for crowd control, and as the technology improves, their effect becomes more political and less safety oriented. A line needs to be drawn between their use against criminals and their indiscriminate use against crowds.” (Pete Stidman, “Less-Than-Lethal?” INDYMEDIA.BOSTON, 23 Oct 2004)
The Hawthorne, CA police department uses less-lethal weapons that emit high-power electrical pulses with no wires attached. They can knock a person down at 15 feet. Pulsed microwave weapons are used for harassment purposes. Like ultra–sound they are difficult to perceive. Used persistently over a period of time they can cause lethal harms. Lasers can blind a person.
The International Committee of the Red Cross banned these devices. Extreme Low Frequency sound devices can affect thoughts and emotions. The U.S. Air Force has a heat generation device, which makes a person’s skin feel hot when they enter an area. Others cause digestive discomfort for crowd control.
The Cambridge police request should be denied until they are studied carefully and in depth. Police need training and strict procedures for their use. Criminals obtained these weapons and use them for political, personal and economic purposes. Few officers are trained in how to stop the criminal use of such non-lethal devices.
Massachusetts has a firearms statute, which prohibits possession of electrical devices. Chapter 140, Section 131 J states No person shall possess a portable device or weapon from which an electrical current, impulse, wave or beam may be directed, which current, impulse, wave or beam is designed to incapacitate temporarily, injure or kill. [There are exceptions.]
In 2001 I wrote a bill for the MA legislature, to increase penalties for possession. In 2003 the legislature rewrote the law. The statute does not require proof of use. Possession or sale is the crime. Rep. William R. Keating wrote the bill, which became law in 1986. Keating is now District Attorney for Norfolk County in Massachusetts. My several attempts to contact him to learn why he wrote the bill were not answered. This seems to verify that police use these devices for extra-legal punishment without due process.
There are numerous web sites devoted to stopping abuses of the testing and illegal use of non-lethal weapons. Some of these include: http://www.icomw.org/
International Committee on Offensive Microwave

http://www.mindjustice.org
Cheryl Welsh is a UN Representative for less lethal technology.

http://www.shoestringradio.net
http://www.raven1.net
Eleanor White’s two sites includes archived radio files, and many links to larger and alternative views of the abuses in the U.S. and Canada.
Some observers believe that psychiatrists use of these high tech weapons for psychological testing and abusive treatment. Academic and military researchers use unsuspecting civilians as human subjects. They want to test the limits of human tolerance by provoking violence and trying to drive people insane. Relatively few people know of their existence and do not believe that they are used on civilians without their consent.
But even when medical researchers are exposed experimenting on vulnerable populations there is no outrage from civilized citizens of this country. No lawyer comes forward until after the researchers admit their abuse 40 or 50 years after the fact. Then the lawyers appear to take 30 to 40 percent of the damages awarded to the victims.
Those who speak up about the abuses are often regarded as having a psychiatric disability with all of the negative biases that accompany such perceptions.
Until there is a thorough investigation of all of the electrical devices being developed and used of civilians the City Council should prohibit the use of Tasers or any other electrical devices, which can be used for hidden harms.

--
Roy Bercaw, Editor
ENOUGH ROOM
Cambridge MA USA