Article Critique

Article Critique

The future of Crowd Control

The article 'The future of crowd control', published in monitor in 2004, the author has highlighted one of the most essential and yet rarely discussed phenomenon, the development and use of Non Lethal Weapons. Although these weapons have been discussed since a number of years, little practical work has been done on their development as well as the ethical issues related to them. It is eminent to mention here that these weapons have been subjected to great criticism and suspicion by the human rights activists as well as other social scientists, who are not sure about the safety of the these weapons and thus demand more research to ensure that these are safe to use and are not destructive at the same time.

The article highlights the three major weapons of mass destructions, including the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), active denial technology as well as tactical maloderant ball, with all three of them focusing on different senses of human beings and manipulating them in order to control crowd behavior (Monitor, 2004). The author has also provided details about the amount of money being spent on these researches, in the development and testing of these Non Lethal Weapons to make sure that these are safe for use and do not have any long lasting impact on the human beings resent in the crowd.

The Non Lethal Weapons have been presented as a substitute to the usual and general methods and means of crowd disposal, which includes the use of shields, rubber bullets as well as water cannons. It has been claimed that these methods are not only safe for use, as they do not induce any physical issue in the targets but are also more effective, as they make sure use of the modern technology and employ better methods of disposing crowds. The Non Lethal Weapons thus make use of the sounds, shocks and stinks to control crowd behavior in a scientific as well as defined manner, for instance, Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) s mainly composed of a megaphone, which produces high pitched sounds, capable of producing a deafening sensation. The sounds produced by this device resemble that of a fire alarm and forces people to move away from the source of sound by inflicting instant headache. It should be taken into account that the sound is unpleasant enough to force individuals 100 meters aw3ay from the source of sound and the same can be used to make short bursts that reach around 300 meters.

Similarly active denial technology accounts for the production of electromagnetic radiations, which are capable of penetrating clothing and cause vibrations of the water molecules present in the skin. The radiations resemble visible light or the radio waves, and produce an intense burning sensation that is equivalent to the sensation produced by touching a burning bulb. These radiations can be applied either directly r indirectly on the participants and thus the crowd can be dispersed without using any particular physical ...