[CH] Pepperball weapon launcher......

Linda Reynolds (lr21@cornell.edu)
Tue, 20 Mar 2001 08:50:17 -0500 

Here we go again, in the news!  Hey, maybe we could include this in
our Reindeer Games at hotlucks and such.....?



  New York's Pepper-Packin' Police

NewsMax.com
Monday, March 19, 2001
"Pepper, please." You don't want to be saying that if you're in New
York and emotionally disturbed. You might just get what you ask for.
New York's finest, who've been getting a hard time for exercising
what some critics see as excessive force in handling folks who are
classified as emotionally disturbed, are ever on the alert for a
weapon that's neither too violent nor too tame - one that's "just
right."
They think they may have come across it, the PepperBall Launcher System.
According to the New York Daily News, which keeps its readers up on
what may await them around the next corner, the city's police
department has been field-testing a new kind of rifle - that means,
shooting it at real people.
Instead of old-fashion hot lead, it fires new-fashion hot pepper dust.
Not to be confused with pepper spray, a liquid that is
popular/unpopular, depending on whether you are in the
spraying/receiving end of the equation, this is a dry dust, suitable
for inhaling and wishing you hadn't.
It is delivered to you in a non-lethal (or your tax money back)
projectile fired at you from a rifle of sorts up to a distance of as
much as 30 feet away. Beyond that it begins to sag and lose accuracy.
The pepper dust is contained, until it hits you, in a plastic ball.
When the pepper ball hits you, it shatters and out billows a whole
cloud of pepper dust.
You'll know the plastic container hits you when you feel eight to 10
pounds of pressure where you didn't feel any pressure a moment before.
It will also sting, something on the order of ammunition used in
mock-war paintball games, for those who go on mock-war games. For
those who don't, it will still sting like a mock-war paintball
projectile. Without the paint. Just pepper dust.
Targets may also confirm they have been hit by looking for sizable
bruises the next day. When they can see again.
Other than the absence of vivid colors, you'll know what hit you was
a pepper ball rather than one filled with paint the very first time
you inhale. After being pepper-balled.
Actually, it's not pepper, at least not the kind you find at the
dinner table or in the red sauce you squirt on what you ordered at a
Mexican restaurant.
This "pepper" is an irritant - an understatement - by the name of
"oleoresin capsicum." It's all right to jot that down if you wish.
You'll not likely remember the name, but you'll never forget its
effects - choking and coughing and falling down and generally not
having a good day.
"Any device that is less than lethal, and gives the officer a little
more distance along the way, is what we're looking for," said retired
Lt. Frank Bolz, who founded the NYPD's hostage-negotiation unit.
Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik added his blessing:
"I think it will be a good tool to eliminate the use of deadly
physical force. It will reduce injuries to cops and the emotionally
disturbed person."
The commissioner did not say whether the PepperBall Launcher System
would ever be launched against someone who was not emotionally
disturbed.
Or whether there was any way of telling after the launcher was
launched whether the target was emotionally disturbed to begin with
or just as a result of having been pepper-balled.