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sound cannons
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."
Mar 04, 2016
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 can emit 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 train or supervise officers in LRAD operation properly, 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 using a diaphragm. In contrast, the LRAD technology uses piezoelectric transducers to concentrate--and direct--acoustic energy."
Edrei, a documentary photojournalist named 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 physically damaging," Edrei said.
"I truly believe that something that is untargeted that is used on an audience, 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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National Lawyers Guild Challenges NYPD on Use of Sound Cannons Against Peaceful Protesters
The city's police department, charges the legal advocacy group, has given itself 'unbridled, unreviewable discretion to suppress protected speech and conduct.'
Dec 15, 2014
The New York Police Department is being challenged by legal advocates for what they say was the department's use of untested, unregulated military-grade sound cannons during civil rights marches in Manhattan earlier this month.
In a letter (pdf) sent to the office of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on Friday, the National Lawyers Guild said the department's use of long range acoustic devices (LRADs) against peaceful street protesters violated numerous constitutional amendments. The group demanded a safety review of the device and public release of guidelines over how and under what circumstances they could be deployed.
Videos of officers using the LRADs surfaced on December 4 and 5 during marches that came after a grand jury's failure to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner. Crowds can be seen dispersing quickly as loud, shrill, repetitive beeps ring out in short blasts over and over.
Watch:
NYPD using LRAD on protestersTaken Friday Dec. 5 at 1:21 AM More info on LRAD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device.
The police department claimed it had used the device as a loudspeaker to make announcements to the crowd. However, as the New York City chapter of the NLG pointed out in its letter to the Commissioner's office, LRADs are designed to "modify behavior, and force compliance, by hurting people... technology that is designed to induce individual compliance through human discomfort and pain cannot be defined solely as a communication tool."
Initially developed as a sound weapon for the military, the LRAD's so-called "deterrent tone" is meant to hit human hearing at its most sensitive levels. As Amnesty International explains, "LRADs can pose serious health risks which range from temporary pain, loss of balance and eardrum rupture, to permanent hearing damage."
Further, as NLG notes in its letter, even by the standards of the police department's own Disorder Control Unit, the smallest LRADs are in the "dangerous range" for hearing damage and pain.
Elena L. Cohen, president of the NLG's New York City chapter and one of the lawyers who authored the letter, told Common Dreams that LRAD use against protesters not only threatens their physical health, but also violates their constitutional rights. "[A]ny regulation of First Amendment protected speech must be narrowly tailored and avoid burdening substantially more speech than is necessary to achieve the government's legitimate interests," Cohen said. "The NYPD does not seem to have any trouble controlling protests and protesters, or communicating with protesters via bullhorns. Using a military sound cannon is clearly not the least restrictive way to get people to move onto a sidewalk or convey message."
One protester who attended the marches when the LRADs were used told Gothamist that he had residual pain from the sound cannon blast for the next six days. "It was like an earache," he said. "Any loud noises made it worse."
Another protester told the New York Times that the experience was not only physically painful, causing her migraines and disorientation, but "emotionally jarring" as well.
"The LRAD was used as a weapon without reasonable notice and without providing a meaningful opportunity to disperse," the NLG wrote in its letter to Bratton, adding that the device was deployed "in circumstances where there was no imminent threat to public safety or property and where its use was not necessary to protect public safety or property."
The letter continues, "the NYPD's uses of the LRAD were unjustified and unreasonable."
The appearance of the LRADs follows recent criticism of police militarization, which came after protesters in Ferguson, Missouri were assaulted with tear gas and rubber bullets by officers perched atop armored tanks, wielding rifles and batons. As Cohen says, the NYPD's sound cannons are an extension of the militarization trend, "part of the now ubiquitous sight of police officers in the United States wearing riot gear and driving tanks."
Gideon Oliver, a lawyer and co-author of the letter, told Gothamist that a sound cannon is not "a precision tool. This is an area-of-effect weapon."
"When the police use it, it's not as if they're just targeting one person," Oliver continued. "It's indiscriminate like teargas."
Moreover, the sound cannons can hurt those not actively protesting. "The LRAD can cause hearing damage, and possible neurological damage, to anyone in its path. Particularly in New York City, anyone walking on the street or out of a building might end up in its path, and suffer short or long term health effects," Cohen said. "This is especially troubling for groups that might be at higher risk to hearing damage, such as children in the street, or mobility-impaired persons who might not be able to get out of the path of the LRAD fast enough to escape hearing damage."
As discovered through a Freedom of Information Law request filed by the NLG in 2012, the NYPD has had two of the devices since 2004 and has admitted to deploying them on multiple occasions--but still has no policies for their use. The NLG called on Bratton to cease the department's use of LRADs until the devices have been tested for safety and guidelines for their use have been made and publicized.
Without such guidelines, the NLG says, the NYPD hands free rein to officers to injure, confuse, and control protesters and bystanders alike, giving the department "unbridled, unreviewable discretion to suppress protected speech and conduct."
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