A recent article in the Mohave Valley Daily News revealed that DHS is using grant money to equip Arizona police departments with military-grade sound cannons or Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD).
The Bullhead City Police Department received $54,000 in grant money to purchase a 100X model and a 450XL model LRAD.
The mass media has known about DHS’s plan to equip police departments with LRADs for more than a decade but has remained largely silent.
A Washington Times article from 2009, titled “DHS helps local police buy military-style sonic devices” warned everyone that military-grade sound cannons are being used against Americans.
“With the help of Homeland Security grants, police departments nationwide looking to subdue unruly crowds and political protesters are purchasing a high-tech device originally used by the military to repel battlefield insurgents and Somali pirates with piercing noise capable of damaging hearing.” (Click here & here to learn how the NYPD has been using LRADs since 2004.)
An article in MuckRock warns that police departments across the country are purchasing different types of LRADs to be used against Americans. In fact, LRAD sells seventeen different types of sound cannons to law enforcement alone!
Hundreds of police departments have purchased sound cannons
LRAD boasts that 400 law enforcement agencies from across the country have purchased their sound cannons.
Unfortunately, DHS is not content with just equipping police departments with sound cannons.
According to LRADs “Applications” section numerous DHS run agencies and the Port of Corpus Cristi, Texas have acquired LRADs.
National Operations Center
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
Transportation Security Administration
U.S.Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Coast Guard Federal Emergency Management
U.S. Secret Service
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
LRADs can cause physical harm to everyone
LRAD mentions over and over again that their sound cannons are safe and not a weapon. Just like Taser or should I say Axon has been saying for years.
A look at Dan Richter’s website reveals why LRADs were created.
“LRAD can also be used too in military training ranges, to protect critical infrastructure such as ammunition depots, nuclear power plants (fixed installation remotely operated through Ethernet), military parades, natural and industrial disasters, crowd control (demonstration / riot), negotiation with terrorist and dangerous criminals (sound easily penetrates through cars and into buildings) etc.”
And that is exactly what sound cannons are designed to do, protect military installations. They were not designed to be pointed at protesters.
As Harvey Pryor warned in the Mohave Daily News article, “You have yet to describe it [LRAD] as a weapon,” resident Pryor said to Police Chief Brian Williamson. “It’s not just a sound system.”
U.S. courts are agreeing with Mr. Pryor but will it be enough to stop DHS?
Last year a New York Appeals court ruled that LRADs can cause “auditory pain, migraines, tinnitus, and hearing loss.”
“Several plaintiffs claimed that they still had periodic tinnitus as of the complaint’s filing (a year and a half after the protest) and at least one plaintiff said that he experienced constant ringing,” Katzmann added. “Another suffered nerve damage and hearing loss that required medical treatment. These impairments fit comfortably on the spectrum of injuries that this court has found sufficient to state a Fourteenth Amendment violation.”
Another lawsuit filed against the Phoenix Police Department’s usage of LRADs against protesters reveals that police pointed them at “children, elderly people, disabled people, and pregnant women”
Is it too late to stop DHS from turning police departments into a quasi national police force? I hope not.