Prisons Are Using Military-Grade Tear Gas to Punish People

[marmar]

from The Nation:


Prisons Are Using Military-Grade Tear Gas to Punish People
A burgeoning arms industry brings the war home.

By Daniel Moattar


In Bahrain, it took an asthmatic man’s life. Bahrain bought it from South Korea, where it’s been used on dissidents for decades. In Egypt, it choked 37 men to death in the back of a police truck. Egypt got it from the USA. It’s tear gas, and it’s becoming a staple of life in American prisons.

Tear gas is mostly known in the United States as a “crowd control weapon” for dispersing unwanted demonstrators. Beloved of US SWAT teams and riot cops, ubiquitous in police arsenals, it played a key role in suppressing civilians during the protests of the Arab Spring. From Ferguson in 2014 to Rio de Janeiro this year, it’s become notorious for its risks and health effects: miscarriages, lung damage, blunt-force trauma, asphyxiation. So why are we using it on captives?

“They started out by using MK9, which is a form of pepper spray. They put a fogger attachment on it, to pipe it into the cell. Then they used a mixture of OC and CS. Then they fired beanbag rounds into the locked cell with a shotgun. Then they upped it to Sting-Ball grenades. They threw two grenades into the cell—a cell that’s approximately 80 square feet. They did all of this back to back to back, without stopping. And then they go in and they use physical force, and they put him in a restraint chair for eight hours.”

 That’s how Mountain State Justice staff attorney Aaron Moss describes one inmate’s experience—which he saw on video—at West Virginia’s maximum-security Mount Olive Correctional Complex. Internal documents from Mount Olive, reviewed by The Nation, confirm that its head warden has declared “martial law” in parts of the facility, superseding standard use-of-force regulations by decree. His declaration authorized the use of “less-lethal” weapons, including grenade launchers, at staff discretion.

The War Resisters League, through a letter-writing campaign run in its prison newsletter, obtained testimony from 18 states on the use of tear gas and pepper spray against inmates—in men’s and women’s prisons, maximum- and medium- security facilities, across the country. For unrestrained use of force on restrained inmates, Mount Olive might be the most well-documented example. .......................(more)

http://www.thenation.com/article/prisons-are-using-military-grade-tear-gas-to-punish-inmates/

[Major Nikon]

1. The military also routinely uses military grade tear gas on it's own members

It's very nasty stuff.

[Sunlei]

2. torturing people, some tortured for decades. Thousands of people with tramatic stress disorders.

And thousands of 'guards' normalized, used to torturing people.

Like to see the supply lists how many electric shockers and boxes of gas and pepper spray each prison buys a year.

[DVRacer]

3. Ah I remember that stuff well

In boot camp we had to go in to the chamber with masks on then remove them and sing Anchors Away after taking off our masks it was brutal.

We had a guy in my company that was the grandson of a concentration camp survivor he refused to go in and was escorted away he never returned to our company. I always felt this was one of the worst things I ever saw he was screaming NO! I will never go in there.