ACLU: ‘Pain ray’ in California prison amounts to ‘torture’ of US prisoners

By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, August 26, 2010 20:31 EST
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The American Civil Liberties Union is outraged over the application of a “pain ray” recently installed in a Los Angeles County Jail — a technology first seen used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which relies upon beams of microwave energy to inflict an intense burning sensation upon anyone in its path.

Inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center’s North County Correctional Facility will likely soon know what it is to face the “Assault Intervention System,” according to reports by local media.

According to The Pasadena Star-News

fires a directed beam of invisible “millimeter waves” that cause an unbearable burning sensation by penetrating 1/64 of an inch into the skin, where pain receptors are located, said Mike Booen, Raytheon’s vice president of advanced security and directed energy systems.

The beam, which is about the diameter of a compact disc, causes an instant and intolerable burning sensation when it touches skin, but the sensation stops instantly when the device is turned off or the target moves out of the beam.

At a news conference, several people volunteered to feel the effects of the machine first-hand.

Sheriff’s Deputy David Judge manned the controls and fired the beam, using a joystick and a monitor, not unlike a video game, to aim the ray gun’s camera.

“The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project, in a media advisory. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people’s lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

The group mailed a letter (PDF link) to the sheriff in charge, demanding he never use the energy weapon against inmates.

Speaking to trade publication Government Technology, Sheriff Lee Baca presented the counter argument…

“We believe that technology can help solve problems facing the corrections community, including addressing issues of inmate violence,” Sheriff Lee Baca said in a statement. “This device will allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant.”

The technology, developed by Raytheon Co., stems from a family of bigger, more powerful military solutions created for the battlefield. These larger versions work the same way, but on a grander operational scale, such as creating a protective zone to safeguard aircraft or using lasers to disrupt shoulder-fired missiles from combat helicopters. In L.A. County, the device will be installed near the ceiling in a dormitory that houses about 65 inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center’s North County Correctional Facility (NCCF).

This suppression tool appeals to law enforcement agencies because when inmates fight in a dormitory, dining room or exercise yard, jail officials often have to wait for backup before they can intervene. The technology would allow them to act sooner, potentially reducing injuries and curbing violence.

“You don’t want to send one deputy in with 65 fighting inmates,” said Bob Osborne, commander of the Sheriff’s Department’s Technology Exploration Program, “which means he’s restricted to watching them fight and waiting for backup to show up to do something about it. We thought it would be better to do something a little more proactive.”

The ACLU, for its part, adds in the letter to Sheriff Baca…

As we are sure you are aware, the military incarnation of this device (the Active Denial System) (“ADS”) was briefly fielded in Afghanistan in June and then withdrawn in July without ever being used. The military version can be mounted on a truck and was intended to be used against protesters outside American
military bases. While the device was being tested by the Air Force, a miscalibration of the device’s power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.

According to a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Juergen Altmann, “the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree . . . over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface,” and “without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on
the same target subject, the ADS has the potential to produce permanent injury or death.” As the report also points out, “the possibility of re-triggering the same target subject puts avoidance of bums at the discretion of the weapons operator.”

The microwave tech has been in development for years, and while it was first deployed in warzones by the U.S. Department of Defense, the technology seems to be better suited to this type of crowd control.

Back when it was better known as the “Active Denial System,” a report [PDF link] by the German Foundation for Peace Research noted…

Concerning use of the ADS against combatants in armed conflict, there seem to be no technical arguments that would result in its exclusion, given that the weapon would be lethal only after relatively long exposure, and considering that flame-throwers – which can produce severe burn injuries and death much faster – are an accepted means of combat. Thus, specific limitations under international humanitarian law do not seem appropriate. (Of course, the general rules – avoid unnecessary suffering, do not attack combatants hors de combat or surrendering etc. – would apply here as with all other means of warfare.)

However, use of the ADS in armed conflict is not very probable: the system presents a large, relatively immobile target that due to its line-of-sight propagation cannot take cover easily. It seems vulnerable to many kinds of light weapons, above rifle range a machine gun may be needed to attack it. A second reason is that armed forces could prepare for millimetre-wave weapons of an opponent relatively easily by adding electromagnetic shielding material to the battle dress, covering the hands, and providing a transparent, but conductive face shield. The latter will be not so easy to achieve for non-state actors.

The down-scaled version being installed in Los Angeles County has the impact radius of roughly “a DVD,” according to Sheriff Baca.

Regardless of its size, the ACLU insists use of such a device on American prisoners is “tantamount to torture.”

Stephen C. Webster
Stephen C. Webster
Stephen C. Webster is the senior editor of Raw Story, and is based out of Austin, Texas. He previously worked as the associate editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford, Texas, where he covered state politics and the peace movement’s resurgence at the start of the Iraq war. Webster has also contributed to publications such as True/Slant, Austin Monthly, The Dallas Business Journal, The Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Weekly, The News Connection and others. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenCWebster.
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  • Anonymous

    It’s summary punishment… The guards decide that a prisoner did something and tortures him without a trial… Not that a judge should ever offer torture as a punishment.

    It’s sorta like when police torture people with tasers who haven’t done anything wrong. Of course when someone dies from it, it’s called summary execution.

    We are in a police state… it’s time for a revolution. Our government has taken to many liberties with our liberties.

  • Randomlettersandnumbers

    All right someone get me the fuck out of here please.

  • Anonymous

    “We are in a police state…”

    You’re right. More proof: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0825/van-mounted-body-scanners-streets/

  • George

    I’m not sure how it is any more torture than the guards beating the crap out of inmates with clubs?

  • Anonymous

    that’s how life is in the police state that formerly was the usa

  • Anonymous

    In Soviet Russia the U.S., microwaves nuke you. Funny how it’s illegal to microwave your cat but not illegal to get microwaved in prison.

  • Neph11

    wait till they encapsulate ionic particles wheeeeeee
    sdi in your back pocket

  • Johnnefavorite

    Who the fuck even thinks of this shit? How does one even think this shit up? In those fifties scifi movies the guy who invented this device would be cooked by his own ray. The only person derserving of having this inflicted on him.

  • Anonymous

    Korporate Amerika loves it’s technocrats. They pay them well, so they can install radiant heat floors in their chemical-saturated McMansions, and these drones think they have arrived. What shit! This country is so morally bankrupt, it’s appalling.

  • Anonymous

    Why don’t they just build a giant blender and throw everyone in??

  • Anonymous

    Why don’t they just build a giant blender and throw everyone in??

  • Anonymous

    It is possible that the inventor tried it on himself a million times, thus reaching violent orgasms. Product testing completed, it was ready for sale to the corrections department.

  • Anonymous

    It is possible that the inventor tried it on himself a million times, thus reaching violent orgasms. Product testing completed, it was ready for sale to the corrections department.

  • Anonymous

    A pressure cooker would probably make a cat more tender

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/FE7AILEZFWKVKRKAWBMKE4QBAM Billy

    This is the same pain ray that was referenced here:
    http://talkingskull.com/article/future-now-pain-ray-weapon-in-afghanistan

  • Anonymous

    What a wonderful Utopia we’re making with all this tech

  • Anonymous

    The ACLU is right! We live in LA County and just posted about our Marquis de Sade-esque LA Sheriff’s department’s new toy today. Check out what this “Pain Ray” does to people. We have video:

    http://thedonkeyedge.com/2010/08/26/no-pain-no-gain/

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GMKMY2TJBQL3EO4IVDMSOZBYRE Tony

    what the fuck is wrong with you people? when a person is sentenced his freedom is taken from him. that is his punishment. to be removed from society. in addition to that. without due process you administer electric shock. mace,pepper spray. and now a pain ray. have you gone fuckin insane?????? since 1980 prison has become big business. sick mother fuckers get to think of heinous shit to do to people already fulfilling their debt to society by just being there physically.
    you have absolutely no fucking right whatsoever to use a pain ray or any other pain causing life threatening device on any American citizen who happens to be convicted and sent to prison. if this ray or any other devise is used on an inmate, time should be taken off of their sentence. after all the judge sentenced them to serve time in prison, not to be fucking electrocuted. to administer this changes the structure of ones sentence with out due process you dumb mother fucker!!!!

  • Anonymous

    When I first saw the headline, I thought it said “Palin ray” is being used as torture, and I thought, oh no, what is Sarah up to now?
    She would be a useful tool for torture, now that I think about it – must be why they unleashed her on all of us normal people, you know the Repugs fetish for pain.
    Sorry to get off-topic.

  • Cosimo_rondo

    I’d choose waterboarding.

  • Cosimo_rondo

    Think of the money the plutes will save not having to RFID us all after all.

  • Cosimo_rondo

    Think of the money the plutes will save not having to RFID us all after all.

  • Anonymous

    Like your website, Donkey! You failed to mention on your site that United States Federal judges are stakeholders in UNICOR. UNICOR is the United States Government’s prison labor program in which federal prisoners work for 1.00 an hour and their labor is resold in the form of various products and services for huge profits. The longer the sentence, the more likely a federal prisoner will seek employment within the prison system with UNICOR and the more money goes into the retirement accounts of federal judges. As far as the Raytheon device in LA, all prisoners in the “land of the free” are subject to routine torture in Special Housing Units for trivial “offenses” at the whim of often mentally disturbed guards fresh from military service overseas. Best advice is to stay out of America’s gulags and Dachau’s, local, state, and federal.

  • Cosimo_rondo

    Who would clean their toilets?

  • Anonymous

    No wonder we have this fine technology to zap the fuck outa people as we have to deal with over 2.5 million prisoners in this free country. This is far above the world average so we need better control so as not to hurt them badly enough so they can still work for their food and lodging (and prison guard retirement funds). Hey! These things probably don’t leave marks either so it’s a win-win for all! Yippy!

  • kcidymkcus

    What they fail to tell us is that this is an Army tested device…This same device cooks the liquid in your body and also your eyeballs. Do an experiment…Take the white of an egg, run it thru a microwave for 20 seconds. That my friends is what happens to the human eye. The merchants of this device know this.

  • Anonymous

    The military has been trying to get the police to act like a military unit for a long time(along with the jerks in our government who act like fascists). This is their way to sidestep the Military Posse-Comitatus act. This, of course, is against the very principles that our founding fathers wanted for its government and is an act of terrorism by our government against we the people. It just shows how we really don’t have a valid government in power anymore as they have become no different than the terrorists they claim we must keep fighting over there so they won’t come over here. Well, it looks like they are already here.

  • Han

    Goes to show we are still ancient barbarous people with a very long way to go. This despite all advances. Remember, we’re still just 25 or so generations beyond the Roman Colliseum.

  • Guest

    Everyone that is opposing this new technology is right. Instead of using this non lethal method of aleviating chaotic situations in prisons, let’s continue to use the traditional method. Let the gaurds come in direct contact with the inmates, beat them with their batons, and pepper spray the inmates, which can cause more severe reactions and even death…

  • Notorious Kelly

    The companies that design & build this crap don’t do it to sell just a few units; they will market and sell them as widely as possible.

    So- if we allow them in prisons- next they’ll be in the inventory of police departments across the USA.

    Likely bought with “Homeland Security” money.

  • Anonymous

    If u want torture, make them listen to one of Palin’s speeches.. THAT is torture

  • Azhermit

    another reason to hate cops… prosecutors, judges, and all forms of corrupt government. Pirates live free!

  • Anonymous

    The Israelis used these in Lebanon. Wait til it gets captured and used on a guard.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/UR4DHHC3P6RRXIUP4LWX54YN7I hu

    I wonder how long it is until they try using this on free Americans to ‘disperse protests’ and the like?

  • Hologram5

    Although I don’t condone this type of action, I do know that the riots in these jails can get crazy and it’s hard to bring it back under control. These men are criminals, hardened by their time behind bars in one of the roughest prisons in the US.

  • Anonymous

    Just how many times do they think they’ll need to use this thing on 65 inmates? If they need a new weapon to control an inmate population of 65, I’m thinking lack of adequate weapon force isn’t the problem here.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3ETFGMQ3B7VD4AAMILBBEVMCWE JasonA

    The foul mouthed folks who post their silly comments here seem to forget that in a PRISON, the guards also carry guns. Isn’t it a better idea for them to use non-lethal weapons? Or shall we assume that the folks in PRISONS are just misguided Boy Scouts, who are good kids at heart – and really should not be there in the first place. Let’s just open the doors and let these convicted felons out to prey on society again. What redical left wing stupidity resides on this site.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3ETFGMQ3B7VD4AAMILBBEVMCWE JasonA

    Yes, lets love and cuddle the felons who murder, rape and kill innocent people. How dare we have any laws at all, let alone put these poor folks in a prison for their crimes…life in the jungle was much better, right? Killing is OK with you? Apparently so. You must be an ex-con.

  • H-Manning

    “no different” than terrorists? Terrorists kill and torture in order to conquer and intimidate their enemies. Law enforcement prefers (in the vast majority of cases) to prevent crimes or stop crimes in progress, such as prison rioting. They have always have deadly force, such as guns and batons and weapons such as pepper spray and water cannons and discomforting weapons such as pepper spray and the use of pressure points to subdue criminals. The use of a heat ray which hurts should be very useful in breaking up a fight. This ray can cause lasting harm as can these other tools, but is safer. It’s probably safer and more effective than a Taser or a lot of other tools needed to break up a prison riot- and these riots must be broken up in order to save lives.

  • H-Manning

    There is little time for “due process” during a riot. And if they are rioting, which includes hurting others and property damage, then they’re not realy repaying their debts to society. This is probably the kind of behavior that got them into prison. Now you advocate that anyone who suffers this kind of treatment should get time off, which would only serve an an incentive to riot. Obviously there should be incentives for good behavior- and consequences for the bad. But threatening solitary confinement or something during a riot is not going to get these criminals to disperse.

  • H-Manning

    Any tool can be misused. Isn’t the microwave ray better than pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, steel batons, and water cannons? These guards are trying to save lives during a riot.
    There’s another side of the coin: people who complain that guards and police have their hands tied when they are scrutinized over every shooting, spraying, and Tasering. We need safeguards and checks, which will be applied to the microwave rays, too.

  • Anonymous

    The reason that prison wants this is that it’s CHEAP!

    Why build enough beds, or bother to separate bad actors? Why go to the effort to make life bearable to inmates? Why bother with inmate safety? That stuff is expensive.

    Just get a cheap piece of technology so that you don’t have to do your constitutionally mandated job of punishing an convict without taking cruel or unusual actions.

    That way you can get back to the big business of making money.

  • Anonymous

    I disagree… if we were more humane in our treatment of prisoners then there would be less blowback.

    It’s also true in general society. The more you supress The People, the more push back and blowback you get.

  • Anonymous

    I disagree… if we were more humane in our treatment of prisoners then there would be less blowback.

    It’s also true in general society. The more you supress The People, the more push back and blowback you get.

  • SCLiberal

    First you test it on inmates. Then you use it on protesters. Then you use it to protect the elite from the great unwashed masses when they finally get enough of the bullshit.

  • Anonymous

    Great point. Even better advice.

  • Anonymous

    I was going to post something similar, stating that when the masses realise what has happened financially (just like the investment class jacking America recently)… and when they see the schemes/games continue… Rockefella and Rothschild mansions will be surrounded with this sort of technology.

  • Anonymous

    … the moment we start protesting.

  • anon

    Stop complaining and get thee to your local city and county council, organize your friends and neighbors and make sure that the local police do not get these or are allowed to keep them. You are only passive observers if you choose to be. Find out who your council members are, talk to them, work with or against them, but realize this will happen ONLY if you choose to sit behind a keyboard instead of getting involved personally in local politics. Show up, and keep showing up until you get the government you want.

  • Anonymous

    One would think actually, logically, as a reasonable person, it would be more effective to exude some sort of happiness ray, if you’re going to invade people’s heads like that at least you wouldn’t want to completely piss them off. “Curbing inmate violence,” the idea is not to give people a reason to be pissed off at you, this sounds like a misdirection of what should be at least an attempt to get people to settle down and be peaceful, maybe you don’t have to completely dominate people with agony, maybe a little good news and positivity would go a longer way than something like this. But then again that’s the “drug war” logic, don’t take a toke of pot, or anything that might mellow you out, the immediate application of pain to pleasure, that’s the substance of some of these ideas.

  • Anonymous

    1. Read ALL of the Bill of Rights;not just the 2nd amendment.
    2.Most “folks in prisons” are non violent drug offenders.
    3.The ones who really “prey on society” on a large scale here are the “defense contractors” and the prison for profit industry. [ how are they for "small government" and "free markets" ?]
    Try to think past your right wing authoritarianism for a minute…..to live in a free society one must accept the associated risks.Now contrast this with the way in which the radical right has foisted upon us:Street cameras,body scanners,check points,spying,torture,DNA swabs,national ID cards,militarized police,pain weapons,etc,etc…

    We no longer constitute a free society because of right wing fear,greed and ignorance.The right, and it’s useful idiots like you, have used “big government” to create a police state nightmare making it safe for global corporations and banks to rule us from craddle to grave.

    So FUCK YOU!!!!

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3ETFGMQ3B7VD4AAMILBBEVMCWE JasonA

    Pardon me while I weep for all of the “innocents” behind bars. Here is an even better idea: Lets do away with all laws and prisons. What a wonderful that would be. You must be high on dope. Have you ever spoken about the people who have been victimized by poor ill treated people in PRISON? Too bad you have no sympathy for them.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3ETFGMQ3B7VD4AAMILBBEVMCWE JasonA

    H-Manning – you are one of the few posters on this site who makes any sense at all.

  • Mark P. Kessinger

    There’s a problem with this. IF you could convince me that this technology would only be used in cases where the only alternative would be lethal force, then I MIGHT be willing to consider the argument. But remember: tasers were sold to police forces across the country based on the same promise (i.e., that they would be used only in situations where the alternative was legal force). Now we have a situation on our hands where police are constantly abusing the use of the taser, and so far have faced few consequences as a result. A prison environment, given its very nature, is a place where the potential for inmate abuse at the hands of guards is ever-present; guarding against the realization of that potential abuse requires constant vigilance. A technology such as this one, I fear, could and would ultimately become a tool of punishment, used even for minor infractions, exactly in the same way the taser has.

  • Anonymous

    “Killing OK with you?” Ha,that’s rich coming from a typical hypocritical rightwing douche like yourself. I suppose dropping bombs on women and children in the middle east doesn’t count as killing right? Yeah,official STATE SPONSERED murder “protects my freedom” right?

  • Mark

    Why would it surprise anyone that the Gov’t would use harmful directed energy assault aka electronic harassment on prisoners when participating groups within the 72 Homeland Fusion centers spread across the USA are already using harmful directed energy on innocent, non terrorist, non suspect Americans in their own homes. Doubt that.. google Freedom from covert harassment and surveillance or website ” are you targeted?

    http://www.nowpublic.com/world/news-conference-gang-stalking-electronic-torture-harassment-0

  • Walkers

    Perhaps. But why are they rioting again? Oh,… their grievances were going unheard or even punished unnecessarily. What happens when the bumpkins start to figure out they’ve been robbed by the elite while sacrificing their kids to kill in other cultures? Why, they’ll riot cuz their grievances aren’t being heard and then the ray will have more usefulness. Methinks there’s a stunning lack of knowing history; just stunning. Couple that with ignorant “patriots” and one can see we’re finished as an experiment in democracy.

  • Anonymous

    “life in the jungle was much better right?” More rightwing hypocrisy. A funny argument coming from someone who likely believes that laws meant to regulate corporate “persons” equal “big government meddling”.

  • Anonymous

    My understanding of what confinement in jail, i.e., a penitentiary was that the isolation from “civil-ized, law abiding society was the penalty/punishment for conviction of a crime. The more serious the crime the longer the convicted served as a means of becoming penitent for his or her crime. Even capital punishment in the spirit of humanity has been changed to be quick and as painless. Evidently as we here in America become so much more enlightened and the beacon of hope of freedom and justice and compassion and saviors of the world, blah, blah and more farking blah because we’re a Christian nation, the majority with the hope and the faith that the all loving, all merciful, all forgiving, sweet Jesus making his return, as a sign of our faith are willing to rob ,rape, loot, blow up, bomb back into the stone age cities larger than most cities in the U.S., engage in war criminality, aid and abet in war criminality to the tune of billions of tax dollars and for good measure are going back to the good old glory days from the 1st to the 17th centuries when torture of sinners common place among all the “civilized societies of the Western World.

    When I hear the mental defective mind-farked mobs chanting,

    “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

    Oh, how I wish I had the wherewithal to amplify my voice to a decibel level that would induce ear bleeding pain, and shout

    SHUT THE FARK UP! SHUT THE FARK UP!

    With the hope, that these are the last words they hear before becoming deaf as a stone!

    I mean this in a nice way, of course.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Sisyphus73 Kevin A Maynard

    I love when morons call torture devices non-lethal.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Sisyphus73 Kevin A Maynard

    This from a jack-ass who thinks torturing people into compliance is moral.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Sisyphus73 Kevin A Maynard

    Hey I know, let’s let the inmates be water-boarded too. After all it’s not really drowning it’s just simulating it. Screw it, let’s just bring back whipping like the good old days!

  • Anonymous

    I think you’ve confused this subject with 72 virgins, or was it 70 virgins. How many virgins can dance on the head of a pin. Fusion in my mind is a combination of rock and jazz, like the Pat Metheny Group which I enjoy thoroughly and other forms of art which in the distant past (60′s and 70′s) it’s a miracle that some creative people were actually able to put their art and music onto “vinyl,” which is now digital, which actually, if you’re a Frank Zappa enjoyer, is a “record,” as in you have a record, negative information maybe true or false or not, but they’ll zap you anyway. Peace out.

  • Anonymous

    Oops — just noticed a typo in my post. Where it says, in the fourth line down, “legal force,” that should be “lethal force.”

  • Anonymous

    I think it is supremely naive to think these devices would only be used in riot conditions or other extreme circumstances. It’s only a matter of time before they are used to punish routine, minor infractions of prison rules. Hell, they do that now with solitary confinement, which most civilized countries recognize for the psychological horror it truly is.

  • kharly

    until it happens to you or your LOVED ones IS IT TORTURE

  • xcitizen

    Coming to a public protest near you.

  • Disgruntled Guard

    A riot can begin for many reasons. Typically it isn’t just because a grievance hasn’t been heard, because usually they are. There’s a very indepth system in Texas and sometimes guards are fired. Sometimes riots occur over gang warfare where inmates have smuggled knives and shivs onto a rec yard to kill a guard or other inmates. Inmates could want to do this for as simple a reason as this person being the source of them being put on a privilege restriction, the prison equivalent to ‘time out’. Some are psyche patients to begin with and situations escalate within a matter of moments. Fighting begins, it spreads as one inmates friends rush to his aid, the opposing force has ‘homies’ out there too, they clash, there’s one or two unlucky prison officers out there who did nothing more than roll the dice and end up in a fight, scared and without any source of comfort but knowing ‘at least the fight is contained out here’. They aren’ immune to this fight. Would you like to know your father, your brother, your son or even your wife was stabbed or raped during a prison riot because they were simply there and it took an hour to accumulate the necessry force to burst in and rescue them? It takes batons which are painful I might add and leave lasting broken bones. Pepperspray which is very strong, takes days to fully decontaminate from, it burns very painfully and sinks into the pores of the skin, no matter how much soap you use. I know, it gets on us guards too. The rubber bullets? Well…these can be lethal. Some are known to puncture skin and kill. I am not saying this pain ray is America’s solution to hostile problems but some of you seem to fail to realize everyone in prison isn’t a drug offender, and everyone there doesn’t view prison as a punishment either. I would worry also of its abuse but…I have seen how hard it is to get permission to gas spray an inmate that has a weapon in his cell. We must give him three warnings spread out over 5 minute intervals requesting him to give it up, on camera, before we are allowed to administer chemical agents. The only time we can bypass this is rioting, and if there is rioting, I can assure you someone in there is dying and that person won’t care that you used a microwave, only that you may be saving them before they are ‘gone’ and never able to see their family on a weekend visit again.

  • Anonymous

    Only after the LRAD causes everyone (uncluding media) to flee in ear splitting pain. Then it will be called “enforcment” when all the news media is gone.

  • Langdon

    Puts down his copy of 1984 and looks outside instead.

    Gotta luv those doubleplusgood duckspeakers.

  • Langdon

    Mind you whilst the USA still murders (so claimed) murderers it doesnt have a moral leg to stand on……

    Do a wiki search on the death penalty in modern HUMANE societies….oh it comes up with no results…fancy that… :P

  • H-Manning

    Water-boarding is planned in advance. It would be useless to stop a riot. How would you go about stopping out-of-control prisoners?

  • H-Manning

    Any tool can be abused. In the Navy, they hit guys they don’t like w/ phonebooks because it doesn’t leave a lot of marks. There are more reasons than lack of airing grievances for prisoners to attack each other. Prisons are full of violent people; even if most of them are in for non-violent crimes, they know how to get what they want by force. They stab each other w/ sharpened toothbrushes to steal food. They have been known to make weapons out of just about anything, such as their own clothes.
    An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure, I agree. We should be investing in more counseling and job-training in prisons, but there will ALWAYS be a need to break up fights.

  • H-Manning

    I agree that treating people humanely is right. We need more counseling and job-training in prisons to reduce recidivism and serve as an incentive for good behavior. However, there will always be criminals who do not respond to treatment and will become violent over the littlest things. If there is a better way to break up fights in prisons, then give suggestions.

  • H-Manning

    Do you really need someone to get you out? If you don’t like it- leave. Or try to do something about the situation, like join the ACLU, help a campaign that will fight what you don’t like, or something else productive. And give some well-thought comments here instead of just idle profanity.

  • H-Manning

    Funny how a cop can use lethal force to stop a violent crime, but you can’t just shoot someone. Oh, neither can a cop or a prison guard. But a private citizen can use lethal force if there is imminent danger. Funny how circumstances make a difference.

  • H-Manning

    I’ll tell you who “thinks of this shit.” The people who are in prisons trying to control a violent population, which includes saving lives: lives of other prisoners, but lives nonetheless.

  • H-Manning

    Good point. Many of them were hardened by the lives they led even before they got to prison.

  • Anonymous

    PLEASE! There are some things that are beyond the pale in a civilized society! ;)

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  • Anonymous

    A… Don’t put Violent offenders with Non Violent offenders like putting gang bangers with druggies.
    B… Release everyone whose in for pot or selling it and the prison population will drop making it less likely to cause fights. Many fights are due to stress from overpopulation.

  • Walking_Turtle

    Huh?

  • Walking_Turtle

    Now that makes sense. But the Prime Executive Operatives of a coercion-and-fraud-based Dominant Culture simply are not allowed to think in such terms as that… it’d be a Major Revolution is ever such a transformation of thinking-style ever took place overnight.

    Send in the clowns? Don’t bother – they’ve been here since Reagan. >:(

  • Walking_Turtle

    From the article: “…armed forces could prepare for millimetre-wave weapons of an opponent relatively easily by adding electromagnetic shielding material to the battle dress, covering the hands, and providing a transparent, but conductive face shield. The latter will be not so easy to achieve for non-state actors.”

    Such innately discouraging Passivating Propaganda that closer be! Think instead of rolls and rolls of fine-mesh woven-wire screen – automotive carb screen just might be ideal, but aluminum window-screen material will do. Then think two outer layers of heavy-duty aluminum foil and sticks of hot-melt glue from the Dollar Store, carefully melted in a flat Teflon-lined pan into sheets of raw material for construction of protective garments.

    With little more than these commonly available materials, a laminated material can be built up using little more than an ordinary clothes iron as the heat source for the necessary bonding. The material can be cut with ordinary scissors, sewn with ordinary needles and fine copper wirte as thread to preserve the conductivity. Thus can vests, arm- and leg-sleeves etc be constructed from Common Hardware Materials.

    Face shield? Just use a motorcycle helmet (carefully lined with the above composite material) and line the snap-on bubble-style face-shield with mere screen-wire.

    Cordial Social Connections to urban garbage dump personnel and community swap-sheds can enhance the value of a Hardware Store account no end. Our gone-sideways top-down USDC Jurisdiction’s Extremely Bad Example need not prevail. (Stay friendly. Wary but friendly at heart.)

    Spread the knowledge. :)

  • Walking_Turtle

    From the article: “…armed forces could prepare for millimetre-wave weapons of an opponent relatively easily by adding electromagnetic shielding material to the battle dress, covering the hands, and providing a transparent, but conductive face shield. The latter will be not so easy to achieve for non-state actors.”

    Such innately discouraging Passivating Propaganda that closer be! Think instead of rolls and rolls of fine-mesh woven-wire screen – automotive carb screen just might be ideal, but aluminum window-screen material will do. Then think two outer layers of heavy-duty aluminum foil and sticks of hot-melt glue from the Dollar Store, carefully melted in a flat Teflon-lined pan into sheets of raw material for construction of protective garments.

    With little more than these commonly available materials, a laminated material can be built up using little more than an ordinary clothes iron as the heat source for the necessary bonding. The material can be cut with ordinary scissors, sewn with ordinary needles and fine copper wirte as thread to preserve the conductivity. Thus can vests, arm- and leg-sleeves etc be constructed from Common Hardware Materials.

    Face shield? Just use a motorcycle helmet (carefully lined with the above composite material) and line the snap-on bubble-style face-shield with mere screen-wire.

    Cordial Social Connections to urban garbage dump personnel and community swap-sheds can enhance the value of a Hardware Store account no end. Our gone-sideways top-down USDC Jurisdiction’s Extremely Bad Example need not prevail. (Stay friendly. Wary but friendly at heart.)

    Spread the knowledge. :)

  • triceratops

    Very nice…and what about to simply shoot them all? It´d be much simpler…anyway they´re murdering them and torturing many other ways, not only in just California. Nor the farm animals are treated such awful way…yuck

  • Biff777

    Days after WTO in Seattle, the city police showed us on local TV in Seattle this device. The police told the public that they could use this on us.

  • H-Manning

    Now those sound like good ideas to me. There are plenty of preventive measures to take, which must be taken for the good of society. But still, a group of concentrated violent criminals would pose a security risk. When they start fighting, the guards must act to save lives, inmates’ lives, but live nonetheless.

  • CaliFam

    Ok,I finally get it,everyone in California has lost their minds,this is insane…what next,the guillotine?Geez……

  • CaliFam

    Ok,I finally get it,everyone in California has lost their minds,this is insane…what next,the guillotine?Geez……

  • SomeoneCares

    Wake up people! This weapon is not new and neither is it non-lethal. People have been complaining about Microwave weapons for years and few have been listening. Now it’s coming your way. Look up Microwave weapon and direct energy weapon. Horrendous sufferings have been taken place for years here in the United States and the victims have been cast off as mental cases. This weapon is stealth in it’s category and does many many “classified” things to people. It’s a slow kill, no trace weapon. People are suffering!

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