They don’t need these devices. There might be some mad people but is beyond the pale. Cops just love themselves new toys. They can’t be trusted with them.

Certainly, this sheriff shouldn’t be trusted with these toys, if anyone should. I kind of doubt that our police need these devices, but the MIC must be fed.

This is the same Sheriff’s department that when called to a Democratic fund raiser in tony La Jolla responded by pepper spraying a 60 y.o. woman.

what is it with the heavy-handed law enforcement in San Diego, anyways?

Sick-ins/Stay home general strikes do not require protesters to take huge risks with personal safety. Neither do boycotts.

Thanks. I was just going to ask that.

here’s an earful for the sheriff:

Sonic Youth

Back when I was a kid I had a popgun and so did some of my brothers. Not sure if we could trust the SDSD with popguns.

I knew that’s what this stuff was really for the minute I heard they were testing it in Iraq.

Notorious authoritarian stronghold since forever. You WILL comply, citizen.

Lots of DFHs with free speech druthers?

I am completely unsurprised to see these weapons marketing and sold domestically. That MIC doesn’t grow without new sales somewhere.

Any town that would hire that “retired” FBI guy is one I’ll stay far away from, thanks.

Thing is, SD is about the least likely place for any significant anti-authoritarian demonstration. Folks like that just don’t move to SD in significant numbers ’cause the vibe there is so icky. There are colleges and universities, but the absence of any youth movement for health care reform nationally doesn’t make that much of a threat. So I’m left with a big WTF on why San Diego, why now, for this weapon deployment.

Word. These are the folks who had nice beefcake pics of them with their paramilitary toys. Not surprised at all its S.D. but, lets put it this way: I’m not getting anywhere near that place if I can help it…

Nobody ever was held accountable for the police riot at Francine Busby’s fundraiser, right?
What is it about these people?

Back in the early 1970s, New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thomson
wanted the NH National Guard to have nuclear weapons,
presumably also for crowd control.

Skeered of browns?

HEAR HEAR.this has nothing to do with “public safety” and more about public injury. we’ve all been waiting to see what kind of death apparatus comes home from the imperialist foreign wars and this is one good example. im expecting to hear any day now that mercenaries are manning remote piloted “sonic” cannons, from a bunker under goldman sachs

Because they can? After all, what good are the toys if no one knows you have them?

Especially when the toys are probably also a form of compensation.

My thought exactly. San Diego is a big military city, with a lot of retired Republican residents. They take their Homeland Security very seriously, as if preparing for martial law. SD city government seems to view itself as a pioneer in the use of oppressive public tactics. A few years ago, just waiting for a plane at the airport was creepy-scary, with roaming armed guards and repeated ominous announcements about how anyone may be searched at any time.

The militarization of civilian police forces is the newest cancer from the Military Industrial Complex, they want to expand their market to make more blood money. And police forces love buying shiny toys. The final irony is that a lot of them are using Homeland Security grant money (read: our tax dollars) to buy this anti-civilian weaponry.

“San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore”

Umm.. this is the hand-picked successor to (and long-time Under-sheriff of) arch-thug “Indian Casino” Kolender, whose basic management philosophy was identical to that of the Sheriff of Notthingham (use office for personal thievery combined with gratuitous human rights violations). This was the same office that disrupted that Busby Dem campaign fundraiser in Encinitas with illegal entry, pepper spray, and an assault helicopter. The Kolender-Gore approach to miltarized law enforcement can be summed up thusly:
http://www.policehelicopterpil…..ter.jpg?__

I disagree with Hmmm.. This city has a reasonably good tradition of political protest, including progressive protest. Running confrontations on the border effectively halted the Minutemen, and anti-war and pro-immigration-reform demonstration from 2005 to the end of shrubco drew tens of thousands. It just also has a tradition of rethug corruption, authoritarianism, politically-motivated policing, and law enforcement militarization. Growing up there, I can say that it was universally known that if you were poor and/or brown and rounded up by the sheriffs (and some, but not all, of the urban police forces), torture would follow arrest without exception… (an exception to this was Mayor Sanders, when he was SDPD chief, who did a good job, IMO, cleaning up and de-militarizing that agency).

I’d wager that Issa has a financial stake in this weapon. Just a guess, but it seems so likely.

This is a sickening report to read. This is just wrong.

Wrong. To keep Quebec’s expansionist tendencies in check. ;)

-G

Hi Loo Hoo, did you go to Issa’a town hall?

it’s just the way they are. To its credit, SDPD has gotten a lot better,thanks to reform started by the current mayor, Sanders, when he was police chief. People have some respect for him, for moving that agency toward more modern (community-based) law enforcement and for addressing ethnic tensions. The sheriff’s department remains barbaric (#22).

Very few nice things can be said about the sheriff’s dept when I was growing up there (albeit a good while ago, so things may have changed for the better). I remember that much of the urban Latino community used to be forced to live in a state of fear. They were routintely dragged off mass transit or just stopped in the streets and subjected to brutally conducted and illegal ID checks and searches. Unaccompanied children were often deported by “accident,” with the the sheriffs collaborating openly with INS, etc. Illegal curfews were frequently ordered. Individual sheriffs were rumored to be working with white supremacist-types in harassing brown people. We just assumed that teens taken by the sheriffs would be severely beaten. More amusingly, raids on parties (with illegal alcohol) would just end up with selective confiscation of beer kegs but without any other type of legal sanction for the minors – for it was widely known and ‘agreed’ that this was a type of ‘alcohol tax.’

by the way, LA is this way too, if not worse.

This has got to be made illegal. Wow…

I think San Diego citizens need to determine the Sheriff’s rules of engagement for using these devices at public demonstrations. Before someone gets badly hurt.

the sheriff’s dept is not answerable to San Diego’s citizens, and has not been for at least a couple of generations. Sure, the sheriffs (two guys in my entire lifetime, Gore is the third) are kind of automatically reelected but they behave with impunity once in office – not only with respect to police brutality but also in terms of what can only be characterized as corrupt conduct. And goodness knows how open those elections really are.

We need to e-mail or write our critters and protest this. They could outlaw the use of such weapons – if they wanted to.

Encinitas. The sheriffs fortunately have no jurisdiction in La Jolla, which is part of the city proper.

No, but I heard that there were 1000 people there and it was mellow. This is the first I’ve heard of this contraption being there though.

The local purchase, via federal taxpayer funded assistance, of such state-of-the-art military weapons is one way to keep the lowly-paid weapons manufacturers busy 24/7. No depression for them, I’m afraid. The US is the world’s leading exporter, and hence manufacturer, of weapons.

Oh, yes, such devices should be prohibited from domestic use. Among other problems, such as their inherent ability to do considerable harm as well as to coerce control, they require the continuing assistance of either DoD or weapons manufacturer training, service and support. We’ll never stop going to war here or abroad until such structural arrangements are undone or considerably reduced in number. If Harry and Sally Nancy were competent, this would be one more item on their to do list. I suspect it’s not even on their very expensive (but ready for export!) radar screens.

I’m wrote Boxer and Feinstein about this. Ain’t right.

In writing to legislators, one should be aware (to avoid confusion) that NEITHER of these incidents occured in the City of San Diego. I believe that the two deployments occured in Vista, CA and Spring Valley, CA – two conservative jurisdictions that are covered by the sheriffs.

The devices were NOT used at the two town halls that took place in San Diego, nor were the used at another one which took place in the City of La Mesa.

Thanks for the correction & info, Blub. Didn’t mean that demonstrations are impossible there, just that they seem like such a small potential problem that they can’t justify this measure. Great job of explaining what else is going on, thanks much.

I was there and I saw it, but did not know it was an LRAD, it looked like a speaker that had been propped up on top of the gym. The sheeple were well behaved at their own (majority R in attendance) event, unlike at Susan Davis’ event.

also.. do we have any confidence that Gore’s thugs actually know how to use these WMDs of their’s… and that they’re not going to accidentally fry everyone’s brains or something?? ;-P

There’s info at the links in the post about the extensive training the SF Sheriff’s deputies got to operate the equipment, but I don’t believe it — since their explanations don’t really track with the manufacturer’s guidance.

he. ’cause these are the thugs you want operating sensitive equipment:

http://www.policehelicopterpil…..7360631522

we’re doomed. are brains are gonna get scrambled.

Perhaps people should compare the output of these devices to the Navy SONARs which are so often in the news. SONARS were often kept active in Vietnam to keep swimmers aware from anchored ships. The output level of these shipboard detection systems is generally admitted by the DoD to be in the range of 135-145 dB/uBar. Consider what they are doing to whales…

Incidentally, SONAR of this class does have a kill range for humans.

Remember when “60 Minutes” did a segment on the “active denial system” and tried to say it would be used on insurgents in Iraq?

Dumbass media, too stupid to figure it out.

The

The M-I-C silly, who do you think runs this county?