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Incapacitating Chemical Agents: Coming Soon To Local Law Enforcement?
Lasrick writes To this day, Russian authorities refuse to disclose the incapacitating chemical agent (ICA) they employed in their attempt, 12 years ago, to save 900 hostages held in a theater by Chechen fighters. Malcom Dando elaborates on a new report (PDF) that Russia, China, Israel, and a slew of other countries are continuing research into ICAs, and the apparent indifference of the international community into such research. Proponents of ICAs have long promoted their use in a variety of scenarios, including that of law enforcement, because in theory these chemicals incapacitate without permanent disability. Critics, however, point out that these weapons rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality, and that the ability to 'deliver the right agent to the right people in the right dose without exposing the wrong people, or delivering the wrong dose' is a near-impossible expectation. ICAs represent the further misuse and militarization of the life sciences and a weakening of the taboo against the weaponization of toxic substances, and the idea that they could be used in law enforcement situations is a disturbing one."
Isn't it common knowledge that the chemical they used was Fentanyl? A very powerful synthetic opiate. And isn't it also well known that a significant percentage of the hostages died as a result?
So much for 'incapacitate without permanent disability.' Another overkill weapon in the untrained hands of local law enforcement. Yay.
US-Americans would NEVER do such things.
Also, if you can save 400 of 500 in a hostage situation and catch all the 10+ terrorists. Go for it. The terrorists would kill them anyway and if they escape, they can continue their business.
"if you can save 400 of 500 in a hostage situation " - Is this the best way to save them? Is this the way to save the most of them?
"catch all the 10+ terrorists" - Who judged them? Who decided they are terrorists?
"The terrorists would kill them anyway" - Are you a Oracle? Do the police employ oracles or futurologists?
"if they escape, they can continue their business" - Are you sure?
So, your scenario is:
1 - The official "police judge" condemns the terrorists with his judging powers that don't require lawyers, juries nor all that hassle.
2 - The official "police oracles" see the future to know how many innocents would the terrorists kill.
3 - Based on the police judge's decision and the police oracle's prediction, the best possible result "killing just a few of the innocents to capture the guilty" is selected and applied with the new weapon.
Until a proper stun setting is found, it must at least be given up to law enforcement to for researching non-lethal means of control. Even the recent events in Ferguson demonstrate the desperate need here. And perhaps, when lethal weapons are done away with those who don't belong in law enforcement will leave?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Do the police employ oracles or futurologists?
It certainly seems so.
Also for once the summary is spot on: "these weapons rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality, and that the ability to deliver the right agent to the right people in the right dose without exposing the wrong people, or delivering the wrong dose' is a near-impossible expectation". Maybe you should have read it. Or remembered that in the russian vs Chechen situation a decade ago, most of the hostages died because of the incapacitating agent. Also, if all it takes is a few gas mask, expect the next hostage takers to use gas masks.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
In fact Foxnews uses the federal definition of terrorist. The exceptions are when they are quoting or taling with people who don't.
However thanks for sharing your hate and ignorance.
FYI, the federal definition of terrorism:
- - - - - - - -
18 U.S.C. 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”:
"International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:
* Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
* Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
* Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*
"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:
* Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
* Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
* Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
18 U.S.C. 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:
* Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
* Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).
FISA defines "international terrorism" in a nearly identical way, replacing "primarily" outside the U.S. with "totally" outside the U.S. 50 U.S.C. 1801(c).
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This stuff wouldn't be allowed in warfare, why is it allowed in use by civilian agencies?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Non-lethal weapons would allow protestors to protest without getting killed. It is fair easier for a live person to argue their case in court than a corpse. The important thing here is to take away the governments ability to kill.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Your concern for the hostages is appropriate. While a crime is in progress, the police should be concerned with reducing the number of victims, as well as reducing the suffering of the remaining victims.
The concern for the criminals during the time of the crime is misplaced. The legal process is how we deal with the aftermath of a crime, not the crime itself. You're right is being careful with the label "terrorist"; that relates to motive. Wed need a trial to establish that. I use "criminal" because that broader label is appropriate during any crime. " Hostage takers" would have worked too, here. Condemning them isn't necessary - they're in the act of committing a crime.
It's incredibly naive to assume hostage takers won't kill the hostages, so force is always appropriate. The relevant question then becomes how much force to apply, as any form of force also places the hostages at a risk. The single relevant question thus is, what is the lower risk to the hostages? The best bet is to look at historical outcomes in comparable situations. This is complex. It depends on the number of hostage takers and hostages, the site, time, the background of the hostage taker, etcetera.
That said, negotiation helps with an ill-prepared bank robber turning hostage taker. 10 hostage takers and 500 hostages indicates a lot of preparation, and strongly points at a lack of negotiation options.
At what point do we decide that giving the ruling classes more and more technological weapons to use against its citizens is a sign that our system of government has failed ? i think that happened a while ago to be honest. If your government needs weapons to stay in power its not leadership its tyranny.
I reject the assumption that the worlds need weapons to be safe , we need NO weapons to be truely safe.
[site]
so when is the US Government going to be indicted on terrorism charges then?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
In 2004, VIctoria Snelgrove was hit in the eye with a pepper spray bullet by the Boston Police as part of crowd control (for a non-riotous crowd that was not responding to their commands). She subsequently died of her injury.
Non-lethal ICA? No such thing.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Those sound like pretty decent definitions, apart from the use of the word "appear", which means those definitions are entirely subjective, and allow someone who had no political motive behind their heinous crimes to be labelled a terrorist when they were not trying to coerce public opinion.
They also clearly define plenty of actions by the US government as terrorist in nature, but I'm sure Fox News wouldn't discuss that...
As the USA nears bottom in its slide toward becoming a complete corporatist police state, I see no surprises in any new "law enforcement tool". Hell, the cops have AFV's, drones, and crew-served weapons. Why not chem warfare, right?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I didn't know Occupy, the Tea Party, gun owners, and people who buy stuff with cash were "barely anybody."
All groups that were put on a terrorist watch list at some point or another, and I know I left a bunch out.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
so basically, if your not an agent of a large country who hasn't officially declared war on the USA, your a terrorist. Surprising that it doesn't also include "corporate" next to "government", as in "affect the conduct of corporate or government" and "attack on a federal or corporate facility". And how large of a group qualifies as a "civilian population"?
usually it's the State Department who declares whomever as a terrorist, not a local judge. I can't quote specific law but you can read this and this but seeing as recently the FBI declared the beheading in Oklahoma "not linked to terrorism" beside the fact he was a Islamic convert who had ISIS stuff all over his FB.
Until individual state legislatures start passing laws allowing their local jurisdictions to declare individuals (and groups) terrorists, your "cop judge" theory is a none-starter (for now). This would quickly end up in the Supreme Court; it's akin to a state deciding to declare war on a group or individual. Oklahoma can't legally have a judge declare someone a terrorist any more than they can legally invade Mexico with the Oklahoma National Guard. The whole system doesn't work that way.
Surely you meant MUSLIMS? Afraid to tell the truth? Who needs the truth, when we can lie about reality, and allow thousands more people to be killed by muslims?
Funny this. I live in an urban part of Texas in a city of over a million people. Yes, Texas... where the gun ranges have single's nights, and where possession of more than four dildos is considered a felony.
In the past 20 years, I've yet to hear a single gunshot in the city other than the shots fired at ranges. The local PD isn't lining up people on the wall and executing them. The prisons are actually winding up slowly being emptied (due to judges not slapping long sentences on some goob caught with his bag o' weed) when 10-15 years ago, overcrowding was a major problem.
No, the country isn't perfect, and there are a shitload of issues to consider (the failed K-12 education system, the lack of campaign finance reform), but unlike what people write, you are not going to get your head blown off the second you set foot in a US town.
Where the rubber meets the road is this: If the US sucked as badly as a lot of Western Europeans claim, there would be a major exodus of Americans to Europe (I'm not talking hundreds to thousands, I'm talking hundreds of thousands to millions), as well as Mexico or Canada. This isn't happening, and the US is still the #1 country people immigrate to (with Russia being second), so it isn't exactly a hellhole that people talk about.
Look, even the summary above makes it clear that "lethality" is usually dose-dependent, and that dosage control is practically impossible in most real-world crowd-control situations. The Snelgrove tragedy is completely unrelated to that issue.
Whether the police are shooting rounds of pepper spray, lead, VX, or candy-canes, if one of them enters your eye socket at high enough velocity, it's unlikely to be "non-lethal". Let's stay focused on the real issue here, the mythology of "non-lethal" chemical incapacitants, and not get distracted by the obvious "don't shoot people in the face with rounds of anything".
That's a bit unnerving, given the prevalence of smoking in Russia. Ether's therapeutic index isn't terrible, but when mixed with air and exposed to an ignition source, it turns into a fuel-air bomb, significantly impairing its "non-lethality".
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016
During the raid, all 40 of the attackers were killed, with no casualties among spetznas, but about 130 hostages died due to adverse reactions to the gas (including nine foreigners).[3] All but two of the hostages who died during the siege were killed by the toxic substance pumped into the theater to subdue the militants.[4][5] The use of the gas was widely condemned as heavy-handed, but the American and British governments deemed Russia's actions justifiable.[6] Physicians in Moscow condemned the refusal to disclose the identity of the gas that prevented them from saving more lives. Some reports said the drug naloxone was successfully used to save some hostages.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Also, if you can save 400 of 500 in a hostage situation and catch all the 10+ terrorists. Go for it. The terrorists would kill them anyway and if they escape, they can continue their business.
Meanwhile, if you have 5000 peaceful protesters refusing to clear out of a park, hey, so a thousand accidentally die. Meh, go ahead and gas 'em, Lou!
I think you underestimate the mindset of the police. The People had it way better when a cop needed to decide whether you posed enough of a threat to actually shoot you, and then need to justify that decision later. Now, they tase first and ask questions later. 6YO girl crying because you arrested mom? Tase. 85YO confused grannie in a panic over a situation she doesn't understand? Tase. Passenger in a car peacefully insisting you respect his civil rights? Tase.
ICAs will just make it easier for police to apply the same reasoning to large groups, rather than to individuals.
BTW, a clarification on the FP - The "unknown" agent used by Russia consisted of a fentanyl analog - An ultra-strong opiate. For reference, as high as 9% of people have a potentially fatal allergic reaction to opiates; on top of that, individuals have a wide range of responses even when given a known dose; some people can take enough morphine to kill an elephant, while others take half of a Tylenol-II and drool on themselves for the next six hours. Using opiates as crowd control will both cause needless deaths and leave a significant fraction of the crowd basically unimpaired.
"The relevant question then becomes how much force to apply"
This is not the relevant question at all. During a hostage situation the use of force is far more likely to escalate the situation into one that would result in the death of hostages. A better solution would be to see if the hostage takers could be talked down. This is normally the first response of any decent policing unit.
As you yourself point out negotiation is relevant for small bank robbers, and it is also true for large hostage situations. Attempting to minimize casualties by sacrificing hostages for the "greater good" is not the behavior that I want from my law enforcement.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Research in this area is probably a good thing if done right. Mace, tear gas, and stun guns are not
very effective in a large crowd or hostage situation. I agree with the article that current methods
rely on exact dosage to prevent fatality but it's highly probable that we can find better chemicals that don't.
Marijuana is one of many known substances where the effective dose and the lethal dose are orders of
magnitude apart. Research into incapacitating substances with very low effective doses but very high
lethal doses would be where I would want to focus. Something like this would be very useful. You could
make everyone pass out and then isolate the bad guys before they wake up saving both civilian and
criminal lives.
What about my concern on who decides they are criminals? What if I don't trust the police to make such judgement?
If people with guns are pointing them at other people without guns, and state they will kill them unless 'x', I'd say the room for error in judgement is rather small, probably so close to 0 that error is impossible.
I fully agree on the question, but not on the answer. I simply do not wish the police to have the right to decide how many hostages it's ok to kill in a hostage situation. And giving them the weapons to apply the result of that decision is too close to implying they have the right to take it.
I think everyone reasonable agrees that the decision in such a situation is an extremely hard one. For me, that's precisely the reason to place the burden of making that decision far from the people we use to protect us from common criminals. Because those people are the most biased on precisely the taking of that kind of decisions.
In the case of the Russians, I believe that decision was made all the way at the top circles, if not the top. Israel, as well, was at the top. Do you have a case where such a decision was made by a local street policeman? Or even a sergeant? Instead of attacking windmills, how about focusing on something realistic?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"... their attempt, 12 years ago, to save 900 hostages held in a theater by Chechen fighters."
In fact, 130 of those hostages died due to the gas. Is that a victory? Is that considered an effective tactic?
Evolutionary pressure will tend to select for individuals who can survive and resist these agents.
Five generations, maybe ten, and we'll have a sub-population of insurgents who drink incapacitant agents from breakfast.
-kgj
It calms people down, and since there are no THC receptors in the brainstem, high doses aren't life-threatening. You might need a lot of it though, and an unintended consequence may be that people would deliberately try to get police to use it on them.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Problem is, if you start placing that kind of restriction, the process becomes so bureaucratic that no decision will be made in time, and your hostages might be butchered while you wait for the authorized decision maker to answer his fucking cellphone and greenlight the appropriate course of action.
So, it becomes a situation with no optimal solution. Whatever you do, you are going to compromise.
The mysterious gas is Fentanyle, in gaseus form, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... .Fentanyle is 100 times more potent than morphine
This particular Fentanyle has been manufactured and supplied by one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Kaunas, Lithuania, albeit prior to 1991. There were investigative journalists who have covered this topic exhaustively, in details several years ago.
Fentanyle has been used in Nord Ost operation and it was not a success. Hundreds of hostages died from overdose and Russians do not like to bring this instance of heavy handed handling of situation.
My memory is probably lacking here. . . . but I thought the gas was a Fentanyl based one. A quick glance over at Wiki confirms my memory is still somewhat intact I suppose:
" A gas, it is presumed, based on a derivative of fentanyl was used in 2002 in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis to incapacitate Chechen terrorist attackers (and their hostages) too quickly for them to retaliate. More than 15% of those affected died, including 117 of the 800 hostages. "
As far as I'm concerned, the police forces of the United States do not need any further toys to play with / test out on their " battlefield ". We already have more than enough evidence of less than lethal devices ( read that Tasers ) being used as compliance devices instead of the non-lethal alternatives they were supposed to be.
In other words, if the officer has no justification in drawing his firearm, he also has no justification in pulling the Taser either.
Until we have a full blown independent system that polices the police, we don't need to provide them with any more means to terrorize the citizens of this country. Trust in Law Enforcement is already at an all time low in this country. If they keep pushing, they may soon get the " battlefield " they've always wanted. Unfortunately for them, battlefields are rarely one-way affairs. If they consider us the enemy, ( any non-LE typically is the enemy in their eyes ) then they had best realize we vastly outnumber and outgun them in every aspect.
For you LE's out there, imagine a job where you are in harms way every moment of every day from every citizen of this country. If you don't start culling the bad apples out, we'll simply start viewing you as you do us.
As the enemy.
When that day comes, (insert your favorite deity here) help you.
It wasn't the chemicals, as you point out, but the penetrating object that killed her. She bled out. If she hadn't bled out, she would have likely suffered severe brain damage as skull and projectile fragments entered her cranium.
The relevance being, also as you point out, that shooting anything into the face is a bad idea when non-lethality is the intent. But any chemical that is going to be delivered in such a way has exactly that potential, as do rubber bullets (have you seen what those do? non-lethal does not mean non-damaging).
Any chemical means to convince a highly agitated crowd to cease and disperse is going to have extraordinarily strong effects, even when used correctly, with some suffering the effects more than others. Some fraction of the population is always going to be sufficiently vulnerable for lethality.
Ultimately, I think we're agreed: The very idea of a non-lethal chemical weapon is absurd.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The exodus is happening, but only by people that spent some time in Europe. I happen to know a few. The others still think that the US is the pinnacle of creation. That belief vanishes surprisingly fast when people get a good look how things really are elsewhere.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
domestic or foreign?
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Doesn't matter. If that particular combination of payload and delivery system resulted in at least one human life ending prematurely, then by dictionary definition it's lethal.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
"We ordered them to freeze and stop all movement. They kept breathing. They brought their deaths on themselves."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Yay, thanks for explaining for me. This is exactly what i meant. When there are 500 people held by a largeish number of hostage takers, it is not normal crime but terrorism. Sharpshooters or negotiations won't help. Obviously, i didn't meant to gas a bank building during a botched bankrobbery, but meant obvious terrorist acts, like the russian case.
In such cases, saving 400 out of 500 is actually a victory.
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My first thought was -- what if it hits a kid or small adult? I'd guess their dosage assumes a roughly 150 pound adult, because that way it'll stop the "more dangerous" persons. I guess anyone under the presumed body mass had better not get hit, eh?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?