Friday, March 04, 2016
NYPD Sued
for 'Gratuitous and Unlawful' Sound Cannons at Eric Garner Protests
"If they're going to have these weapons,
they need to be trained in how to use them safely and constitutionally and
supervised."
A protester takes part in a mass
"die-in" in Times Square on December 4, 2014. (Photo:mothdust.net/Reprinted with permission)
A group of journalists and activists is suing
the New York Police Department for civil rights violations over its use of
military-grade sound cannons known as Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs)
during protests against police brutality in 2014.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday against the
city and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, charges that police used the LRADs to
force the dispersal of peaceful demonstrators who had gathered in midtown
Manhattan on December 4, 2014 to protest the non-indictment of NYPD
officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
LRADs are capable of emitting shrill,
pulsating blasts at decibel levels that are dangerous to human hearing.
Plaintiffs Anika Edrei, Shay Horse, James Craven, Keegan Stephan, and Michael
Nusbaum say they experienced hearing damage, nausea, migraines, and other
injuries after two NYPD officers deployed an LRAD at close range to crowds on
the night of the protest.
The "gratuitous and unlawful" use
of the devices caused the plaintiffs to "endure physical and other
injuries, including deprivation of their rights to free speech, assembly,
expression, and to gather and disseminate information freely, as well as their
free press rights," the lawsuit states. Moreover, the department failed to
properly train or supervise officers in LRAD operation, it continues.
"The LRAD is more a sound weapon than a
traditional loudspeaker or megaphone," the lawsuit states. "A
traditional loudspeaker or megaphone, including the familiar police megaphone
typically used by the NYPD in connection with crowd control, amplifies sound by
use of a diaphragm. In contrast, the LRAD technology uses piezoelectric
transducers to concentrate—and direct—acoustic energy."
Edrei, who works as a documentary photojournalist
under the name Mothdust, told Common Dreams on Friday that
they have continued to experience ear pain more than a year later. "It's
intimidated my willingness to do that kind of photography partially because
it's dangerous and it's actually physically damaging," Edrei said.
"I truly believe that something that is
untargeted that is used on an audience, that threatens their First Amendment
rights, is unethical," Edrei said. "I just think it's important that
someone speaks up about this."
The lawsuit comes more than a year after
civil rights attorneys Gideon Oliver and Elena L. Cohen sent a letter to NYPD
commissioner Bill Bratton requesting that the department conduct
proper testing of LRADs and adopt formal policies for their operation—a letter
that went unanswered, the attorneys said.
"LRADs are weapons," Cohen
told Common Dreams on Friday. "We wanted some kind of
assurance that officers are being trained and supervised and that it's being
documented when they're being used. The NYPD said they needed more time, but in
a year and three months, they've been able to provide zero documents."
Cohen said the ideal solution
should be policy change and a city council hearing, not litigation. "I
think there's reason to be very concerned and cautious about whether the NYPD
can use the LRAD in protest situations, particularly in Manhattan and crowded
places," she said. "We're worried that they're using these beyond
negligently. There are a lot of concerns about whether the LRAD can ever be
used safely and constitutionally in New York City. That said, what we're asking
for now, is at the bare minimum, if they're going to have these weapons, they
need to be trained in how to use them safely and constitutionally and
supervised."
As revealed through a Freedom of Information
request filed by the National Lawyers Guild in 2012, the NYPD has had two LRADs
since 2004 and has admitted to deploying them on multiple occasions—but still
has no policies for their use.
As Amnesty International explained in a 2014 report on police
militarization, the devices "target people relatively indiscriminately,
and can have markedly different effects on different individuals and in
different environments."
That means "the LRAD's deterrent tone
has no place at a protest," Cohen continued. "In order to seize
people, you need to have a lawful cause. By using the sound weapon that forces
people, through pain, to move in one direction or another direction, that's an
unreasonable seizure. This is a ticking time bomb and it's only a matter of
time before someone gets hurt again."
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Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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