PITTSBURGH — Police ordered protesters to disperse at the Group of
20 summit last week with a device that can beam earsplitting alarm
tones and verbal instructions that the manufacturer likens to a
"spotlight of sound," but that legal groups called potentially
dangerous.
No longer the stuff of disturbing
futuristic fantasies, an arsenal of "crowd control munitions,"
including one that reportedly made its debut in the U.S., was deployed
with a massive, overpowering police presence in Pittsburgh during last
week's G-20 protests.
Nearly 200 arrests were made and civil liberties groups charged the
many thousands of police (most transported on Port Authority buses
displaying "PITTSBURGH WELCOMES THE WORLD"), from as far away as
Arizona and Florida with overreacting...and they had plenty of weaponry
with which to do it.
