What I find the most disturbing about the Oakland PD's use of rubber
bullets, wooden bullets and everything else they lobbed at protesters
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.htm was the fact that they were shooting these things into the crowds for
more than two hours!
A recent Democracy Now! report has them coming in with their riot gear,
and clearly none of the riot cops were prepared to arrest anyone. No one
saw beltloops full of plastic handcuffs or busses or anything throughout the
entire demonstration.
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030408.html Back to the two hours. These cops are being assured that their weapons
are non-lethal. (I believe the real term is sub-lethal)
If you hit someone 5 or 6 times with this crap, there's a good chance the
person is going to die!
And that's not my biggest problem with this particular event. If you spend
two hours shooting these people rapid-fire like that, non-stop; where does
your memory play into this. Where do your fantasies play into this.
40 years from now, when a few hundred of these riot cops have alzheimers,
they are going to firmly believe that they shot to kill over and over and over
again. They are going to be unable (or at least have great difficulty) to sort
out anyone in their previous military career they killed and any protesters in
the US they maimed in "battle."
When you point a weapon at someone you have conducted a heinous act
of violence, when you pull the trigger it's even worse. I don't care if it's a
tumbler round inside, a tiny cylander of wood, a beanbag or a blank. I don't
care if it's in the act of raping or pillaging, defending yourself or your loved
ones, or "liberating" an enemy's nation. Justified and rationalized or not, it
will still have been a heinous act of violence.
I know someone who killed a child molester. He will be the first to tell you,
he did the wrong thing for all the right reasons. He lives with that for the
rest of his days. He takes 50 minutes of therapy every week. He will probably
never stop.
My three years in the army, I had to ask over 300 chaplains before I found
one single one willing to tell me that firing a weapon at someone to kill them
is wrong, period, end of paragraph.
Again, whether justified or not, whether following orders or not. It's never
right.
Never right.
Never right.
Pointing a weapon at someone is wrong.
Shooting it is worse.
To any law enforcement who might be reading this as a forward:
GET HELP.
THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.
We've been militarizing the police forces drastically since as early as 1996,
near as I can tell, and it only got hundreds percent worse after 9-11. We now
live in very dangerous times.
And seeing cops fantasizing about dead protesters for two friggin' hours
scares the shit out of me. Especially knowing what video games they're
likely playing in ALL OF THEIR SPARE TIME and what military units they
came from before becoming cops when they couldn't score high enough
on the police exams without the extra ten VA points.
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/1597037.php
Northern Ireland has seen a huge amount of civil unrest and the suppression of demonstrations by the partisan police force. After finding that the use of ordinary lead bullets was bad public relations the occupying police forces switched to using "rubber" bullets, later renamed as "plastic" bullets or "baton rounds".
Several people have had their faces blown off by these things, including memorably, a 7 year old boy.
The authorities will always try and down play the amount of sheer violence that the existence of the State depends upon by talking about "non lethal" weapons, while they're busy spraying chemical agents on you and beating the crap out of you.
The Pat Finucane Center has been researching and documenting the long history of human rights abuses carried out in N.Ireland by the forces of "law and order". (Pat Finucane was murdered by those same forces). You'll find some interesting info at the URL below.
A particularly apposite link is this one:
http://www.serve.com/pfc/policing/plastic/plastic23072001b.html Victims of Plastic and Rubber Bullets
Rubber Bullets
Name
Age
Shot
Circumstances
Francis Rowntree
11
April 22 1972
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 5-7 yards. Non-riot situation.
Tobias Molloy
18
July 16 1972
Shot in the chest by British Army from a distance of 2-3 yards. Eyewitnesses said he was not rioting.
Thomas Friel
21
May 22 1973
Shot in the head by British Army from 25-30 yards during riots in Derry.
Plastic Bullets
Name
Age
Shot
Circumstances
Stephen Geddis
10
August 8 1975
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 40 yards. Non riot situation
Brian Stewart
13
October 10 1976
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 10 yards. Non-riot situation
Michael Donnelly
21
August 9 1980
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 15-20 yards. Non-riot situation.
Paul Whitters
15
April 25 1981
Shot in the chest by RUC from a distance of 5-7 yards.
Julie Livingstone
14
May 13 1981
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 7 yards. Non-riot situation.
Carole Anne Kelly
12
May 22 1981
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of less than 10 yards. Non-riot situation.
Henry Duffy
45
May 22 1981
Shot in the head by British Army. Non-riot situation
Nora McCabe
32
July 9 1981
Shot in the head by the RUC from a distance of 2 yards. Non-riot situation.
Peter Doherty
36
July 31 1981
Shot in the head by British Army through his living room window. Non-riot situation.
Peter McGuiness
41
August 9 1981
Shot in the chest by British Army from a distance of 3 yards. Non-riot situation.
Stephen McConomy
11
April 19 1982
Shot in the head by British Army from a distance of 5-6 yards. Not rioting
Sean Downes
22
August 12 1984
Shot in the chest by RUC from a distance of 2 yards.
Keith White
20
April 14 1986
Shot in the head by RUC at point blank range.
Seamus Duffy
15
August 9 1989
Shot in the chest by RUC from a distance of less than 10 yards. Non-riot situation.