Doctors and human rights experts documented hundreds of incidents from June 2025 through May 2026 and estimate true number is ‘far greater’ It’s been a brutal tactic deployed by local and federal law enforcement officials time and again over the past year: using teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to control protests outside ICE detention centers or during enforcement operations. Now, a new report lays bare the scale of the use of these crowd control weapons during anti-immigration demonstrations acros...

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[–] 24 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Huge problem during the 2020 protests too, all of these officers who knowingly used their equipment recklessly in ways that permanently maimed people must be imprisoned or this country will never be safe

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Wouldn’t the danger these weapons pose fall under many states stand your ground laws?

    I am willing to bet if protestors / monitors were very armed in a decent amount of numbers those illegal uses of force would stop happening

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You'd think so, but ask the folks down in Prarieland TX how defending themselves from law enforcement violence worked out for them

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (2 children)

    That’s different, someone fired on a government agent who was pointing their gun at someone else. That would not fall under stand your ground because the person holding the firearm was not in immediate danger.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Nope, Texas self defense laws treat defense of another the same as defense of self, see Subchapter C sections 9.31-9.33

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I still think it’s a reasonable deterrent. Amount of people armed matters, too. I don’t even think the agent raises his weapon if many of the people standing in the crowd he aimed at have a reasonable means to defend themselves. (In the Texas case the man who fired was hidden from him)

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    Imprison them, eh?

    And... who is going to... take them to jail?

    Convict them, through their qualified immunity?

    And run that jail they are sent to?

    ... you want the system to imprison itself?

    Not gonna work.

    You need to think outside of the system, to solve a problem the system exists to create.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    And... who is going to... take them to jail?

    If holding murderers accountable makes other criminal law enforcement implicate themselves in conspiracies to cover up those murders all the better. Gotta start somewhere and gotta clean the whole culture up, this shit we've been dealing with is unsustainable.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago*

    You are missing the point.

    Sure, yeah, I agree: If looking the other way, covering things up, that certain individuals did is also criminal, then it follows that those people who covered things up should be jailed too.

    ... but this is so systemically pervasive that the system of law, and imprisonment, would have to convict and imprison a substantial portion... of itself.

    It is not going to do that. The actual people this would involve, they realize that holding other, worse actors accountable, potentially means holding themselves accountable as well.

    So, they don't, and a norm of corruption, or maybe a partial and tiered legal system ... is maintained.

    You would, at best, need a massive, top down flushing out of the entire system, to do something like that... and even then, the guilty or potentially guilty members of the system will pull out every stop to stymie this.

    Which of course presumes this is possible or likely to occur... not sure if you keep up with things, but the Republicans and Trump have explicitly stated multiple times they are going to rig and steal every election they can.

    Or... you realize the system cannot fix itself in the way you seem to think that it can.

    So something outside of it must 'fix' it, or at least pressure it.

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  • [–] 43 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    How many videos are there floating around of ICE just rolling up and discharging nonleathal weapons on protestors? They enjoy hurting protestors. That's why they signed up. I feel like it's not much longer before we start hurting back.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Every day I wake up and I’m shocked that it hasn’t already happened. I’ve said it before and I will say it again; I am genuinely baffled that people in masks with no badges can walk up onto people’s private property waving guns and not get immediately shot in this country. The only thing that I can really figure out is that all the trigger happy people are in ICE.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    It's not a war crime if it's against your own civilians... apparently.

    Tear gas is a chemical weapon.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    If you're anywhere politically Left of fascist, you should embrace your Second Amendment right while you can.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    Helmets and safety goggles peeps

    You can buy cheap ones for under $20, they’ll be better than nothing.

    If you can afford it, get bulk safety goggles to hand out to others. Super easy to lose an eye out there.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    It was deliberate, so "misuse" is a misnomer.

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  • 6 comments in c/politics@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] [S] 14 points 3 months ago

    as the headline implies, the use of these toxic & brutal crowd control measures is synonymous with misuse

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    They are more willing to hurt you today than yesterday. Keep that in mind when you join a protest. We are not in same world we used to be.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I remember learning about Malcolm X years after school.

    We are peaceful people, we are loving people. We love everybody who loves us. But we don’t love anybody who doesn’t love us. We’re nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us. But we are not nonviolent with anyone who is violent with us.

    Schools really failed me here. Never really helping understand why the need for protest. It was about buses and drinking fountains, not systematic poverty, gerry mandering, or violence.

    I decided to read his wiki since I still don't know enough. I found this:

    "the same white supremacy that lynches Black people in America bombs villages in the Congo and bulldozes homes in Palestine."

    Malcolm X, 1964.

    The terms of his assassination in 1965 are unclear, going all the way to 2023 with his family in 2023 suing CIA, FBI, and NYPD for concealing details. Feels like things haven't really changed.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    They have. Sure the gov has always been willing to kill specific people if they get too uppity but the acceptable use of force in the last few years against general protests has gotten more severe. Even the WTO, Occupy Wall Street and BLM stuff didn't come will such widespread acceptance for outright murder, dangerous misuse of equipment or use of deadlier tactics. What the police are willing to do to protesters today, on average, seems to be ramping up.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    This isn't misuse. This is intentional use. They are using these weapons to intentionally inflict as much harm as they can. The only reason they don't use lead on people is because killing and maiming people this way makes them less likely to work together to stop ice.

    Fun fact, DC, which is now under permanent martial law they just don't call it that so people are less likely to fight back, has 1 person with a gun who is allowed to murder any regular person they want without repercussions, for every 70 humans. 1 in 70 people in DC has a gun and a mandate to murder Americans. And I'm not including ice, FBI, DHS, or S.ecret S.ervice in that number. That's just cops and active troops on the street. So the real number is likely closer to 1 in 55 or 1 in 60.

    At the height of nazi Germany, including the gestapo, the SS, the "regular police" and the military police, there was only 1 enforcement agent for every 380 people. trump has 10x more violent thugs on the streets of DC than the nazis did in Germany.

    The nazis were able to kill a tenth of their population. That'd be about 34 million people here. Of course, that's crazy. We do have nazi levels of police on the streets already, even outside DC, but America is too big.

    Well, you might be able to do that in America, but you'd need the 3rd largest army in the world patrolling our streets, and you'd need to be building concentration camps to augment the largest prison system in the world. Hey, did you guys know ice is now the third most well funded army in the world, right behind China's army? Did you know they're building dozens and dozens of concentration camps?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    It's not quite machine gunning them down with a 50, but it's damn close. I'd hate to live on the difference.

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  • 3 comments in c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Europeans ask "why don't more Americans protest" as though we don't live in a police state with literal brownshirts throwing people into the back of a van.

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