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Battles in the streets with cops are getting more and more dangerous. Anyone who has been to a peaceful protest in the streets in the past year, knows of the increased use of force by police on the generally unarmed protesters. This is made possible not only by the police on power trips who reside over today’s American cities, but by companies small and large that have been designing new and more advanced “non-lethal” weapons to be used against us. The Jaycor corporation is just one of these companies.

Tear gas, paint bombs, and fire hoses are just the beginning my friends. Plastic and bean-bag bullets and pepperballs, used most recently during protests against Bush’s Iraq War, have become common, but are still on the low end of the technology ladder. Check out some weapons currently under design that will very soon make their debut at a protest near you!

Case Study: The Jaycor Corporation

The Jaycor corporation was founded in 1975 and has since worked primarily for the Department of Defense. In 1999 Jaycor Tactical Systems (JTS) was created “with the mission of developing, manufacturing, and marketing goods and services to assist law enforcement and corrections departments gain compliance with nonlethal weapons”. In 2002, JTS was bought by the Titan Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin.

While Jaycor has supplied law-enforcement and prison authorities with non-lethal weapons for years, the newest line of proposed weapon systems is getting more advanced, and more brutal. Here are just a few of the things Jaycor has in the works:

Sticky Shocker: the next step after plastic bullets. When this bullet is shot out of its gun, it sticks to the target and transmits electricity to stun that person. According to Jaycor’s advertising page, the Sticky Shocker “puts stun-gun technology on a wireless self-contained projectile, allowing temporary incapicitation of a human target”. The electric bullet, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), “contains a battery pack and associated electronics that will impart a short burst of high-voltage pulses."

The glue material used in the Sticky-Shocker comes from Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico. Sandia’s “sticky foam” technology is paired with a “short barb attachment scheme”. Jaycor’s website announces that “the short barbs are designed to partially penetrate thick clothing or leather to achieve suffiently close contact with the skin."

Ouch!

Water Cannon: not your average super soaker, Jaycor’s “wireless stun gun technology can deliver electric shocks to individuals at ranges up to 25 feet without conductive wires.” The Water Cannon is designed as a hand held unit for use by a police officer to immobilize a protestor by delivering a “stream of fluid that delivers a high-voltage pulse capable of delivering shock even through protective clothing.” But it is also designed to operate by a vehicle-mounted water cannon for use on an entire crowd. Jaycor claims that “in certain applications the electrical current could be controlled to deliver potent electrical shocks to equipment as well as individuals.”

GLIMPS: The Grenade-Launced Imaging Modular Projectile System. Combines camera with radio-transmitter in a 44mm projectile. Being developed for use “by law enforcement and the military in an urban environment to extend surveillance capabilities”.

Other New Nonlethal Technologies

While most of the above mentioned technologies have been created to suppress dissent within the United States, there is a series of other nonlethal weapons that are currently being designed for use by the US Military in foreign countries.

Time Magazine recently reported on the Pentagon's interest in the creation of nonlethal weapons technology for use in foreign countries. Through interviews with activists, watchdog groups and nonprofit organizations, and via information obtained via Freedom of Information Act Requests and the websites of the weapons manufactureres, these are some of the new technologies the world can look forward to:

Directed Energy Weapons: beams of microwave energy that flash heat upon a target from a distance. These weapons, being designed at the Air Force Research Laboratory have so far cost taxpayers $40 million dollars. The beams, usually mounted atop a humvee, "do not burn flesh but do create an unbearably painful burning sensation. " Expect to see this in the military's arsenal by 2009.

Antitraction Material: Texas's Southwest Research Institute has created a "sprayable antitraction gel" for the Marines. Makes the ground so slippery you won't be able to walk or drive on it.

Nonlethal Chemical Weapons: the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philly has been researching "malodorants" for the Pentagon. Using such smells as vomit, burnt hair, sewage, and rotting flesh, these weapons are designed to quickly clear out spaces from anyone who can breathe. Mostly being designed for use against protesters.

Barriers and Webbing: General Dynamics has created an elastic web that "springs up from the ground in an instant to block a road". According to Time, it can stop a 7500 pound truck travelling at 45 MPH and then wrap it up inside of it, trapping the occupants. Foster-Miller has designed a 10 foot wide net made out of Kevlar. The net can be shot out of a gun and entangle targets from as far away as 30 feet. Bigger nets are being designed for bigger targets.

Ray Guns: No, this isn't some SciFi fantasy. Santa Barbara's Mission Research Corp is working on a "pulsed energy projectile (PEP) that superheats the surface moisture around a target so rapidly that it literally explodes, producing a flash of light and a loud bang." Perhaps even scarier is the new technology from HSV in San Diego. This flashlight sized taser can paralyze targets as far away as TWO KILOMETERS by transmitting an electric current along a beam of ultraviolet light.

What's Next??

After Miami’s FTAA protest in December, it’s necessary to take a look into the production of non-lethal weapons, their role in the rapid transformation of the balance of power between protesters and law enforcement, and their increasing brutality. They don’t want us in the streets. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for politics. Fuck them. Just make sure the next time you go you wrap yourself up in some bubblewrap or something.

*quotes taken from Time Magazine, "Beyond the Rubber Bullet: The Pentagon's effort to create nonlethal weapons that hurt but don't kill has set off its own fire storm" By LEV GROSSMAN July 2002 unless otherwise noted.