The Human Toll of Flashbangs

The use of flash bangs by law enforcement is horrifying. These tools were design for to support direct action missions by special operations forces, and are, essentially, burning thermite [1] (e.g. able to melt through an engine block). To be clear, a direct operation mission is the use of lethal force to kill or capture one or more individuals or perform high risk hostage rescue. In these types of military operations, the operators run a extreme risk of severe injury or death and the death of the targets is both acceptable and highly likely. The balance of the risks and the battlefield circumstances make their use acceptable. However, law enforcement is rarely permitted to operate under these types of conditions. Their goal should almost always be capture working under the Fourth Amendment presumption of innocence. As such, flash bangs are simply not congruent with law enforcement operations.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thermite</a><p>Edit: grammer and thermite link

<i>Bou Bou was sleeping in a portable playpen at the foot of his parents’ bed when the Habersham County Special Response Team broke down the door to the room and threw a flashbang. The grenade landed on a pillow next to Bou Bou’s face. The blast blew a hole in his chest, severed his nose, and tore apart his lips and mouth.</i><p>That&#x27;s horrifying. I can&#x27;t believe that these things are allowed to be used with so little oversight.<p><i>In October, a Habersham County grand jury declined to indict the officers involved. “Some of what contributed to this tragedy can be attributed to well-intentioned people getting in too big a hurry,” the grand jury wrote in its findings.</i><p>What they call &quot;too big a hurry&quot; I call reckless endangerment.

&gt; <i>“If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.”</i><p>Disgusting. The militarisation of police is a blight on our societies progress. And now where I live is succumbing to it too, albeit far more slowly than what those in the US have to deal with. The fact that SWAT teams are using flash bangs and automatic weaponry to raid a woman&#x27;s house for selling beer without a license blows my mind.<p>&gt; <i>Department officers testified that their general SWAT training included work with flashbangs even though it wasn’t formally recorded in department training logs.</i><p>In other words, they&#x27;re lying to cover their asses again. Like police have never done that before. Disgusting.

I&#x27;m so past fed up with police in America. The drug war is pathological. The notion that a cop can kill an unarmed suspect with impunity (especially if they&#x27;re black or homeless or mentally ill) is disgusting. The belief that &quot;law and order&quot; is a value worth allowing one group the exclusive privilege of breaking any law and causing any disorder they like without consequence simply has to end.<p>I&#x27;m at the point where I think the only sane thing is to dismantle the police, as we know it, and rebuild something less violent, less systemically racist, less prone to imprison or kill the mentally ill, and more aligned with basic human decency.<p>Talking about how dangerous flashbangs are misses the point of how dangerous the system that wields them is and how dangerous the people employed by that system are. Police have dozens of tools and techniques for destroying human life. As long as they are empowered (and even expected) to use them with impunity, there will be tragedy after tragedy, where children, the mentally ill, and innocent people, are injured or killed or imprisoned.<p>Not that talking about flashbangs is a bad idea. I just think we&#x27;re past the point where fixing flashbangs will significantly fix things. This is a systemic problem which can only be resolved by systemic solutions.

I don&#x27;t live in the US, so I am maybe missing something but, if the police wants to arrest someone, wouldn&#x27;t be easier to wait until this person leaves the house, grab him on the street and tell him: &quot;Hi mate, we are the police and now you are under arrest&quot;.<p>I don&#x27;t see the need of assaulting a home.

<i>“Everyone carries a flashbang,” Malette testified. “Any time we encounter locked doors, we have an unknown, we have to gain back that initiative.”</i><p>I understand that police are interested in maintaining control of a situation, but practices like throwing flashbang grenades into houses without looking...these guys seem to think they&#x27;re Delta Force.

There will NEVER be accountability as long as the conflict of interest remains where police actions are investigated by a prosecutor that relies on these same police for him to do a successful job.

I don&#x27;t think the problem is so much that flashbangs are being thrown, as that they are thrown when storming the house of someone committing the grave crime of illegally selling nachos.

There seems to be a some demand for safer flashbangs (perhaps something with really bright LEDs and really loud speakers). This[0] seems to at least address the brightness aspect of it.<p>I mean, if the point of flashbang use by LEOs is supposedly to disorient&#x2F;confuse&#x2F;distract a suspect during arrest, this seems to be better-suited to that role. And better yet, if they&#x27;re electronic, they should be (at least hypothetically) entirely reusable, saving a LEA a lot of money in the long run.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.bluesheepdog.com/2012/03/13/delta-light-ball-flashbang-alternative/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bluesheepdog.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;03&#x2F;13&#x2F;delta-light-ball-flas...</a>

Use weapons against civilians and you get predictable consequences.<p>Not sure why this is permitted in the USA, starting to think that most Americans are really a bit braindead.

Is there anyway to push for or endorse research into police weapons use in USA? I seem to remember a discussion some time back pointing out there was no central registry or even need to report gun use for all police forces.<p>It just seems that blowing the face off a sleeping baby ought to be the point you start filling in forms and asking questions like &quot;is the person throwing a grenade well trained? Has the information they are acting upon come from as reliable source? Is there post action public reviews?<p>It seems that some parts of the USA lead the world and some parts still have hay stalks in their mouths.

There seems to be some room for innovation here. The police are throwing these things blind. Evidence? Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would <i>intentionally</i> throw a flashbang into a baby&#x27;s crib. What&#x27;s needed is a flashbang that either won&#x27;t go off if in close proximity to a living being (e.g. perhaps add an IR sensor) or a flashbang that is triggered remotely, so it can be thrown, spotted, and triggered only if in a desirable location.<p>Personally, I think building a flashbang that&#x27;s harder to injure people with will simply result in increasingly idiotic behavior on the part of the police. The real solution is to use flashbangs less and with better training. That means regulations and oversight because the police apparently suck at policing themselves. However, the U.S. loves to solve problems with tech even when it&#x27;s not the best solution, so there&#x27;s money to be made here.

As an infantry combat veteran of multiple tours, the idea that police forces are using flashbangs is disgusting.

That the officers involved in these incidents are never indicted is kind of a red herring. They follow procedure and feel like they&#x27;ve done nothing wrong.<p>The real issue is that we allow a procedure in which occasionally we throw grenades at babies.

OT: This is the third of fourth site in recent days that I&#x27;ve been on and thought I was on Medium. The designs all look identical. Medium&#x27;s design is really nice so I&#x27;m not about to complain but it is a bit strange.

flashbangs are warranted when there is a high threat profile. The problem is that a &#x27;raid&#x27; doesn&#x27;t rise to the level of &#x27;high threat profile.&#x27; The problem isn&#x27;t the police tactics, it&#x27;s a problem of bad risk management. Police have been considering all manner of crimes &#x27;raid worthy.&#x27; If SWAT was going after known dangerous and armed gang members or they were in a hostage situation, flashbangs might be the right tactic; it would depend on the threat profile and pre-raid intelligence. SpecOps operators rarely just blast into a room. Oftentimes there are eyes on the target, including surveillance to determine the threat profile. Cops could have very easily just staked out the house and grabbed the guy when he walked outside. But that isn&#x27;t as &#x27;sexy&#x27; and suiting up in full battle rattle and rappelling from the roof tossing flashbangs, and kicking in doors.<p>While the drug war is a big prt of this, the larger problem is the lack of meaningful and audited protocols for various situations.<p>Going after a guy with weed should require a much different approach than taking down a meth lab. Though, a flashbang in a meth lab would be a sight to see.

<i>&gt;At least 50 Americans have been seriously injured, maimed or killed by flashbangs since 2000</i><p>I was surprised to see this statistic included. It really makes this issue seem less significant and does not help the argument being made. This means a little over 3 people per year injured or worse. Probably less than 1 death per year. By comparison, vending machines alone kill over a dozen people each year. Was this supposed to say, &quot;we located over 50 people&quot;, and not intended to be put forward as a statistic?

ProPublica is quietly doing the best journalism of the past few years.

I don&#x27;t even know what to say after reading that article.<p>How can this be even remotely acceptable to anyone?<p>I mean they are using them in cases where they know for a fact it is not a dangerous situation - an elderly woman selling beer? They used it TWICE? Really?

I wonder how many people were like me, in that they thought the Counterstrike version of a flashbang was representative of the real thing?<p>I never really considered how they worked until now.

Outcome of arms vendors needing new markets.

First, the Albequerque incident was cold blooded murder and the indictment is very appropriate.<p>Second, flash bang use is already dramatically declining so this sory is about three years to late. But nice effort.

I&#x27;m not sure if this belongs on this site. This is .. utterly political.<p>Reading that article leads me astray and I have to question the sanity of the persons involved, both on the acting side (police) and the justification side (spokesman, random &quot;Yeah, criminals are dangerous and all&quot; crap).<p>This is the prime example of a cultural clash, of an article that is relevant for the US of A only (I hope there&#x27;s a debate over there and people that think this usage is okay are somehow considered sane, locally).<p>For a foreigner like me this is tragic. Every single example in that article was bullshit. Inexcusable and mind-blowingly stupid. I&#x27;m aware of the fact that I might be deluded and that the &#x27;real world&#x27; - over there - looks different. But seriously, what do we have in common if this is acceptable and &#x27;best practice&#x27;?