Recent antiwar demonstrations in San Francisco resulted in 2,000+ arrests, but police tactics are escalating. Today in Oakland California many people were injured while being dispersed from a non-violent protest. The indescriminate nature of the police violence is indicated by the fact that 6 nearby workers (longshoremen) who had nothing to do with the protest had to be treated for injuries after the police dispersal.

This story of police brutality broke into the mainstream media, but its important to visit the San Francisco Indymedia site where all the full details are. The corporate media uses the euphemistic terms of bean bags (non-lethal nylon sacks filled with lead shot), rubber pellets (just like a shotgun but with rubber shot not lead), wooden dowels (hard bullets made of wood - approximately the size of a spool of thread), and sting grenades. For a full run down on these items, you may find the totse.com site useful: http://www.totse.com/en/politics/police/163061.html There are many sites that deal with the particulars of less-lethal weapons used for crowd control.

Let's hope that the US escalation doesn't encourage the UK to warm to the idea of using non-lethal weapons to disperse crowds. Sections 3, 12, 14, 44, 60, etc may not do the trick, because you still have to find the pressure points and handle fences. The handy thing about using "non-lethal" weapons is that you're not even supposed to use them within about 7 metres or else you are very likely to actually kill people. This doesn't allow you to target people so well, but crowds disperse pretty quickly when you start using live non-lethal ammo. Well, the UK government sanctioned the use of non-lethal weapons to disperse crowds, did it? So why am I worrying?