No more rubber bullets
With thousands of people taking to the streets in more than 140 American cities, demonstrating against police brutality and demanding justice for the death of George Floyd, police departments have reliably turned to a decades-old piece of crowd control equipment: rubber bullets.
These projectiles are meant to offer the authorities a less-lethal alternative to traditional bullets when dispersing a crowd. But rubber bullets are still too dangerous and destructive. Authorities should explore safer options and strive to use nonlethal tools when dealing with unarmed crowds.
Developed by the British in 1970 for use in Northern Ireland, rubber bullets were intended to be fired at the ground or at the legs of protesters to cause pain and minor injury to break up demonstrations. But it quickly turned out that the bullets were rarely deployed this way. Instead, police would fire them at an unsafe range, often causing devastating injuries, disability and even death.
The British would move on from rubber bullets after just five years — firing more than 55,000 of them during that span — because of the damage they inflict.
But law enforcement in countries throughout the world, most notably the U.S., had already adopted the bullets. Decades worth of use have not improved the outlook on the projectiles.
In fact, a 2017 study by a team of U.S. academics and published in the British Medical Journal argued that more than 25 years worth of data had proved rubber bullets are too dangerous for crowd control. The researchers found that 15% of those struck by rubber bullets suffered a permanent disability, usually loss of sight, while 3% died.
During the recent protests through the U.S., images have flooded the news and social media of demonstrators suffering serious injury due to rubber bullets fired by the police. People have broken bones, suffered severe head trauma and lost eyes while demonstrating. Such violence is unacceptable, particularly when the authorities are not under immediate threat.
These supposedly “less lethal” alternatives to bullets are incredibly dangerous. American authorities should scrap the use of rubber bullets and explore safer options immediately. Britain moved on from rubber bullets, and the Catalonia police force banned them in 2014.
It is possible to perform law enforcement duties without discharging dangerous projectiles into a crowd. American police should adapt their techniques to protect, not harm.