Pittsburgh's Litte State of Siege

You didn't hear much about it from any major US  news organizations, but  there was a very disturbing case of gratuitous police intimidation and violence at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh last week. 

At least those of us who went to Pittsburgh managed to get a close look at the latest cutting-edge technology in anti-democratic crowd control -- one of the few remaining growth industries where the US is still the undisputed world leader. 

One local newspaper account described  the events at the Pittsburgh G20  as a "clash" between the police, protesters, and college students. 

Indeed, a handful of storefronts were reportedly broken on Thursday September 23 by a  few unknown vandals. 

However, based on our own visit to the summit,  interviews with several students and other eye witnesses,  and a careful review of the significant amount of video footage that is available online, the only real "clash"  that occurred in Pittsburgh last week was between off-the-wall lawless policing and the Bill of Rights. 

Nor was the sudden outburst of activity   on the University of Pittsburgh campus late last Friday night,  hours after the G20 had ended, just a matter of a few "bad apples." 

Rather, it appears to have been part of a willful, highly-organized, one-sided, rather  high-tech experiment in very aggressive crowd control by nothing less than a really scary uniformed mob. New York police sometimes describe their firemen counterparts, tongue in cheek, as "robbers with boots." In this case we have no hesitation at all in describing this uniformed mob in Pittsburgh as "assailants with badges."

This resulted in the unlawful suppression of the civil rights of  hundreds of otherwise-peaceful students who were just "hanging out with their friends on a Friday night in Oakland," or attending a free blues concert in Schenley Park.

In addition,  the aggressive policing also suppressed the civil rights of a small number of relatively-peaceful protesters and quite a few ordinary Pittsburgh residents, most of whom were as innocent as bystanders can be these days. 

Why did this occur?  Perhaps the simplest explanation was offered by  a student who overheard a policeman piling out of a rented Budget van near Schenley Park around 9:50 PM Friday. The officer was heard to exclaim, "Time to kick some ass!"

From a certain angle this makes sense. After all, thousands of police had  basically stood around for days in  riot gear, sweltering in the "Indian Summer" heat, dealing with god-knows-what levels of tension associated with potential terrorist attacks as well as all the hassles of managing the protest marches, even if peaceful. Furthermore, there was also the inevitable class and cultural tensions between cops, Guardsman, and college students -- most of whom could not imagine volunteering for military service, much less for police work, for even a day.

JOIN THE CLUB

In any case, all this adds Pittsburgh to the growing series of  cities around the world where such tensions and abuses have created conflicts -- most recently in connection with  economic summits, national political conventions and -- at least in Europe -- the presence of UK soccer fans. 

The list of summit frays includes this summer's G-8 in Italy,  last Spring's G20 in London,  the September '08 RNC in Minneapolis,  the '04 RNC in New York City, Miami's Free Trade Area of the Americas Summit (11/03),  Quebec (4/01),  Naples (3/01), Montreal (10/00),  Prague 9/00), Washington D.C. (4/00),  the  November '99 WTO "Battle in Seattle," the J18 in London (6/99), Madrid (10/1994), and Berlin (9/88).

In prospect, Obama had chosen Pittsburgh for the G20 because he hoped to showcase its recovery  since the 1980s, and especially in the last  few years, under a Democratic Mayor, in a Democratic state. In retrospect, the failure of these leaders to control the police at the G20 has created a serious blemish on the city's reputation for good government.

TIANANMEN FLASHBACKS

To journalists like me who happened to have been in Beijing in May 1989, during the buildup to the June 4th massacre inTiananmen Square,  Pittsburgh also bears an odd resemblance to that earlier,  much more bloody and intense, conflict on several fronts. The analogy is a little strained, but bear with me.  

(1)  As in Beijing, there was a very large deputized police force from all over the country.  These included  over 1000 police "volunteers" (out of 4000 total police and 2500 National Guardsmen) who were ported in just for the G20.

According to the conventional wisdom, not being from the same community where you are being asked to mace and kick the crap out of total strangers is likely to reduce your inhibitions.

The guest policeman also included several hundred police who were under the command of Miami Police Chief John F. Timoney,  pioneer of the infamous "Miami model" for suppressing protest that was first deployed at the Miami Free Trade Area of the Americas Conference in November 2003.

As one writer has observed, back then, Timoney, who  also served as Police Chief in Philadelphia,   "literally transformed the city into a police state war zone with tanks, blockades and “non-lethal” (but severely damaging) artillery."

It is unclear to what extent he played a similar role behind-the-scenes in Pittsburgh this year, but there certainly is a strong sulfurous odor.    

(2) As in Beijing, In Pittsburgh there were no identifying badges on officers' uniforms, and they also refused to provide any identifying personal information in response to questions. Several photographers also complained about receiving threats and actual damage to their cameras.

(3) As in Bejing, there was simply no  contest between the power of the security forces once they mobilized, and those of the unarmed students.  The "clash" concept looks even odder once we take into account the  fact that on Friday night there were, on the one hand, hundreds of police in full riot gear,  armed for bear with equipped  muzzled attack dogs, gas, smoke canisters, rubber bullets, bean-bag shotguns, pepper pellets, long-range pepper spray,  at least four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters (courtesty of New York Governor Patterson and his National Guard's 3-142nd Assault Helicopter Battalion unit),  plus several brand new "acoustic cannons" (see below). There were also probably several undercover agents provocateurs -- at least three of whom were "outed" by the students. 

 From this angle, the key difference in Bejing may have been that the authorities at the time were much more genuinely concerned about being ousted,  and  were therefore able to justify their brutality as part of a zero-sum game. In the case of Pittsburgh, therefore, the (admittedly much smaller) amount of police violence that occurred last week was much more gratuitous.

(4) Just as in Beijing, for some reason the Pittsburgh police state really enjoyed listening to  the sound of its own loud, repetitive warnings, broadcast from sound-trucks -- like the following,  broadcast  repeatedly last Thursday and Friday: 

"I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disburse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you will be in violation of the Pennsylvania crimes code, no matter what your purpose is. You must leave. If you do not disburse, you may be arrested and/or subject to other police action. Other police action may include actual physical removal, the use of riot control agents, and/or less lethal munitions, which could risk of injury to those who remain."

The fact is that this warning was itself completely unlawful.  Putting on my NYCLU lawyer's hat, it is a clear violation of the First Amendment's explicit recognition of right to "peacefully assemble"  --  in the absence of a "clear and present danger" to the peace, which no one alleges.  Even then, any would have to be subject minimal, tailored restrictions. Despite all this, the brute fact that  last week the police and National Guard in Pittsburgh, in effect,  temporarily seized power over the public streets, parks, and other public spaces, and exercised it arbitrarily.  By the time the victims of these outrageous civil rights violations were able to get into court, it was already too late.

(5) As in Bejing, the police and military decided  to launch their biggest raid late at night,  after the summit had ended,  most major media had gone home, and the courts had closed for the weekend.

Of course, there were no tanks, no real bullets, and no fatalities in Pittsburgh. Unlike the April '09 G20 and the Genoa G8 protests, no civilians died as a result of police actions. But the Pittsburgh students who were on the receiving end of all this unprovoked police brutality -- like one who was shot four times in the back and legs with rubber bullets, and another who was gassed and shot in the face -- may be forgiven for wondering just how close they came to emulating their peers in Europe.

ANTI-FREE SPEECH COP TOYS

Police behavior at all these global summits has evolved over time into a high-tech affair that would make Iranian crowd control experts turn  bright green with envy. 

For example,  last week's G20 featured one of the largest US deployments ever against civilian demonstrators of  "LRADS," or acoustic cannons.  These sophisticated  "phase array" device s emit a targeted 30-degree beam of 100+decibel  sound that is effective up to several hundred yards, and is potentially very harmful to the human ear. 

Manufactured by San Diego's tiny American Technology Corporation (NASDQ: ATCO), the $37,500 so-call "500X" version of the sound cannon that was used in Pittsburg was developed at the behest of the US military, reportedly in response to the USS Cole incident in 2000,  to help the Navy repel hostile forces at sea.

The Pittsburgh units  were apparently  purchased by  local sheriffs' departments across the country with the help of recent grants from the US Department of Homeland Security. Officially the grants have been justtified in the name of improving communications with the public, by permitting clearer voice channels (!), but that's a cover story -- the true purpose is crowd control. ( Roll tape: LRAD-500X_SDCo_Sheriff1).

Other recent ATCO customers include the US Army (for "force protection" in Iraq  and Afghanistan), and  the US Navy and the navies of Japan and Singapore, for communicating with potentially-hostile vessels at sea.  In 2008 ATCO has also flogged its wares at the biannual China Police Forum, Asia's largest mart for police security equipment. Obviously China would make a terrific reference customer, since it is one of the the global pacemakers in dissident suppression. 

ATCO also has a 2007 contract with the US Marine Corps' "Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program" to develop new, even more powerful weapons, euphemistically branded  "acoustic hailing devices."

Until recently the most widely-publicized use of LRADS had been against Somali pirates. The devices have also been deployed against "insurgents" by the US military in Fallujah,  by the increasingly-unpopular regime of Mikhail Saakashvili in the Republic of Georgia, and by New York City at the RNC in 2005. Just before the Pittsburgh G20,  they turned up  in San Diego, where the Sheriff's Department provoked controversy by stationing them near a Congressional town hall forum -- just in case.

The growing  use of LRADs for domestic crowd control in the US is worrisome, not only because it is a potent anti-civil liberties weapon, because -- just like tasers,  rubber bullets, OC gas, and other so-called "non-lethal but actually just "less lethal" weapons" -- they can cause serious injuries to ears, and perhaps even provoke strokes. 

TOYS IN THE PIPELINE

For the homeland security technology buffs in the audience, you should rest assured that LRADs are hardly the  only potential "less-lethal" free speech-and-assembly killers in the pipeline.  In the last decade the non-lethal weapons arena has exploded, and the US appears to be  far ahead, assisted by ample  R&D grants and purchase contracts from the Department of Justice's "National Institute of Justice," DHS's multi-billion dollar Homeland Security Grant Program, the U.S Coast Guard, and the Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, and DOD's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) Program. 

The industry has also been aided by key contractors like ATCO, spearheaded by legendary engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur "Woody" Norris.  like Penn State's Advanced Research Lab -- home of the Institute for Emerging Defense Technologies.   NIJ also works closely with police organizations like PERF, and international organizations like the UK's Home Office Scientific Development Branch.

Of course, the development of such non-lethal technologies is usually justified in the first instance by their potential for providing an alternative to heavier weaponry, thereby reducing civilian casualties in combat situations.

The fact that the US military now has at least 750 military bases around the world, and has also recently started to play an important "military policing" roles in countries like Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, underscored DOD's need for these technologies.

The problem is that just as in the case of the LRAD,  once developed, it is very difficult to wall such technologies out of the US, or restrict them to "pro-civilian/pro-democratic" uses. 

Even aside from their technical merits, the competitive nature of the global law enforcement equipment industry  virtually insures that every tin-horn US sheriff, as well as every Chinese party boss in Urumqi, will soon have access to the very latest democracy suppression toys. 

The irony, of course, is that the first generation of all  these next-generation anti-free speech weapons are all being developed,  not by China, let alone Iran, Burma or North Korea, but by the ostensibly democratic US,  leader of the "Free World." 

NEXT UP

So what's in store for us next? Well, of course some crown jewels are classified, but even a cursory review of public sources reveals that the following new crowd-control technologies may soon be coming to an economic summit near you.  (See this recent UK review for more details.). 

▣ "Area Denial Systems." 

A powerful new "directed-energy" device that generates a precise, targeted beam of "millimeter waves," producing an "intolerable heating sensation on an adversary's skin." 

Under development by the US military since at least the late 1980s, this class of "non-lethal" weapons is now close to field deployment. Its key advantage over LRADs is that it has about ten times the range. Raytheon is already supplying its "Silent Guardian" version of the system to the US Army.

The next step required to bring this product to the police market will be to make it smaller and more mobile. According to this week's New Scientist, a new highly-portable, battery-powered version of the system, called the "Thermal Laser," will soon become available -- though it has yet to show that demonstrate conclusively that it is within the bounds of the UN Binding Protocol on Laser Weapons.

▣ New Riot-Control Chemicals and Delivery Systems.

Subject to the dicey question of whether these new "calmative," drug-like agents are outside the boundaries of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (to which the US and 187 other countries are signatories), these would not irritate their targets, unlike pepper spray or tear gas, but calm them down.

In the words of one DOD/JNLWD research director:  "We need something...like anesthetic agents, that would put everyone to sleep or in a good mood..." Or as the former Marine Corps commander of the program said," "I would like a magic dust that would put everyone in a building to sleep.." Among the delivery mechanisms considered: drinking water, aerosol spray, or rubber bullet. (Apparently the old-fashioned, tried-and-true "light up, inhale, and pass on" method is not a candidate.) The College of Medicine at Penn State's ARL, located 135 miles east of Pittsburgh, has been especially active in advocating the advantages of such new chemical weapons.

Unfortunately for it, DOD apparently believes that the CWC and its current regulations prohibit it from funding the developing such magic dust directly, so it is working through DOJ and DOE to do so.

▣ Glue Guns

If all else fails, UK's Home Office reports that another approach to "less- lethal" crowd control weaponry is also making progress -- a gigantic glue gun gun that sprays some 30 feet, bemingling its target audience in one huge adhesive dissident-ball.

Still unsolved is the question of precisely what would become of all those stuck together, or how the police would avoid becoming stuck to them -- but undoubtedly millions are being devoted to tackling these issues even as we speak.

SUMMARY - CHINESE "IMPORTS"

I went to Pittsburgh last week to represent Tax Justice Network, a global NGO that is concerned about the harmful impacts that tax havens and dodgy behavior by First World banks, MNCs, lawyers, and accountants are having, especially on developing countries. I was under no illusion that the reforms we   were rather politely advocating would quickly be adopted, but at least we'd  say our piece,  if anyone cared to listen.

I came away with the depressing sense that not only was this G20 summit, like its many predecessors, not designed  to be a conduit for independent opinions. It had actually, become in practice, an excuse for theithe suppression of dissent, by way of the vast new security measures that it demanded and subsidized, and the repressive tactics that it legitimized. 

In this day and age, of course, security  is to some extent necessary -- the inevitable cost of having the world's top 20 or so leaders holding a movable feast that changes its location every six months or so.

But I was also struck by how unnecessary,  senseless, and indeed counterproductive almost all of the repressive policing tactics were -- compared with, say,  just allowing the overwhelmingly non-violent demonstrators and students at that peaceful Friday night blues concert  to have their say.  Instead there were 200 arrests, and scores of people gased, clubbed, rubber-bulleted, and imprinted with galling memories that will last a lifetime, and the City of Pittsburgh and its residents will be fighting criminal cases and civil rights law suits for years to come.

Far better to establish a permanent location for all these global summits. Perhaps one of the Caribbean tax havens could volunteer -- after TJN gets done with them, they will need to find a new calling!

Of course the protesters in Pittsburgh were concerned about many different issues.  But one way to simplify the analysys is to imagine that all these security excesses occured simply because  Hu Jintao, China's President, wanted to consult with the other G20  members in peace, without having to confront  any pro-democracy, "Free Tibet," Falun Gong, or Uighur demonstrators. And that was only possible if, in addition to all of China's other exports to the US since Tiananman, it also managed to export its attitudes and behavior toward civil liberty .  

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