I am a born New Yorker but was not raised here but have cjhosen to live here for 2/3rds of my life, from the bad days of the 1970's thru Gulliani and Mayor Mike. I worked as a TV news camerman/producer for some of that time and got to know many NYPD Officers, including the ESU crews that respond to the worst situations.
NYPD policy os NOT to use CS/Tear gas or Rubber bullets in a crowd situation. It serves no purpose other than to inflame an already bad scenario into a full blown riot. We haven't had too many of those of late.
The Emergency Services Unit has a bunch of ways to dissuade people before physical or chemical actions are taken. Sometimes merely soaking the crowd with a fire spray nozzle directed upward so as to create a drenching rain works on cold nights. Believe me that they have a serious monitoring capacity. Vidcams are installed in every lamppost and building entrance and can be accessed remotely from the ESU truck. they can photograph you, digitize, run you thru the database and know exactly who you are in less than 5 minutes. Same with license plates. In addition they have people inside the OWS crowd in street dress and have been stopping and searching folks who they ID as "smugglers" and a fair amount of "offensive" weaponry had already been confiscated before they moved in.
All in all, the Boys in Blue OTN NY's Finest did a damn good professional job. Minimal physical contact, all materials confiscated were available for retrival that afternoon at an Impound yard on the Westside piers.
Compared to Oakland, Atlanta and elsewhere, you are safer in NYC than almost any city of its size. Including London.
The NYPD is far better trained and equipped than 99% of the PD's around the country. They are professionals at work.
I've seen the same guys who were in the squads the orther morning, jump into a freezing river with a fast current to save a street skell and we have one of the most diverse forces in the nation. They speak 27 languages, They even speak ASL.
Amongst the 38,000 NYPD Officers there are certainly some scumbags and miscreants but in general Thuggery is a thing of the past at the NYPD.
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Originally Posted by Txjake
dispersant gases, like CS (tear gas) are nonlethal ways used to break up mobs. The whole point is to use something that wont do permanent harm to the unarmed people being routed. If the OWS crowd were armed, there are other methods that would be used to disperse them, based on what they were doing, up to and including lethal force directed at those who are carrying weapons.
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