8 ms·

Do you have a suggestion for a better way to achieve the same results? (Of course we can discuss if most of the uses of tear gas are wrong, but lets for a mome

Do you have a suggestion for a better way to achieve the same results? (Of course we can discuss if most of the uses of tear gas are wrong, but lets for a moment think that we have a moment were we need to chase away a crowd of evil persons riotong and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children.)

mdorazio 6y ago
Did you really just use a “think of the children!” argument to justify tear gas? Not cool. To answer your question, basic tactics in crowd control using water cannons and riot shields with minimal force is plenty to handle crowds when you don’t deliberately antagonize them to violence.
- eitland 6y ago
  > Did you really just use a “think of the children!” argument to justify tear gas? Not cool. Way to misunderstand and derail an honest opinion in my opinion. Also I am not playing the "think of the children card", I'm just trying to create a situation where we can discuss - the correct use of force separate from the issue of - if the use of force is correct Feel free to come up with a better example. > To answer your question, basic tactics in crowd control using water cannons and riot shields with minimal force is plenty to handle crowds when you don’t deliberately antagonize them to violence. Let me explain: Why I wrote what I wrote: I've been subjected to tear gas while locked in and unable to escape until allowed (military training). I know very well what tear gas can feel like: coming out from the bunker I felt I was suffocating but I did as I was told and ran until it cleared up and lived to tell. Same with everyone else. So unlike many (most?) HNers I have actual personal experience with it. I've also worked with and around some high pressure pump systems (farming) and seen some demos of firefighting water cannons and my best guess is that water cannons will be more dangerous if you use enough force to have the same effect. After all, being knocked to the ground is really dangerous if you don't manage to protect your head. I'm open to learn though, preferably if someone who actually know what they are talking about (might very well be you, just explain how you know) will explain.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    You wrote a crowd of evil persons [rioting] and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children.) so you cannot say you are not playing the 'think of the children' card. It really seems like you are just trying to take over control of the conversation and make it run in the direction of normalizing the use of force. So unlike many (most?) HNers I have actual personal experience with it. Why are you assuming HNers are not politically active? I've been tear gassed 6 times since last Friday and this is not my first rodeo. I have a bunch of use gas grenades sitting on my desk whose manufacturers I'm tracing right now. Your military training experience is good as far as it goes, and I have heard similar stores from many police officers, but it seems to me you are overlooking many factors. You were selected for physical fitness and toughness before being admitted to military training and you knew that however unpleasant the experience that it was a controlled setting supervised by experienced people with full medical facilities and personnel available if anything went wrong. Imagine yourself part of a small crowd of people of mixed experience, age, mobility, and physical health. Some are prepared with masks or respirators, eye protection, and full-body clothing, others are in casual wear like shorts and t-shirts. You and they are standing on the sidewalk around an intersection, occasionally someone shouts an opinion or a few people chant something but mostly people are quiet. Halfway down each block is a line of police in riot gear with gas masks. At an order from their sergeant a grenadier on one street fires two or three small CS gas grenades toward where the street meets the intersection. People run or walk briskly away from that line of police and around the corner. Most are OK although a few are not handling it well and need help breathing or rinsing their eyes. Next the police farther up that street fire a couple of grenades at the street, causing the crowd to change direction. Some run across the street, if they can. The police on the 3rd and 4th streets repeat the process and now about half the crowd is off the sidewalk and in the intersection. Police throw a larger combination CS gas grenade into the middle of the intersection which explodes with a 175 dB bang, a bright flash of light, and a much larger and thicker cloud of CS gas. While everyone is variously indisposed, the lines of police move from down each block right up to the intersection, penning the crowd in from all sides. Than a recorded message is played declaring an illegal assembly because so many people have departed the sidewalk. The stated cause for this action was that some minutes earlier, when 2 streets were still open down to the next intersection, an unknown person drove up to and through the intersection, dinged another car, and down the street at a dangerous speed before making a sharp turn and driving away. It's unclear to me why this was considered the fault of the people standing on the sidewalk. This happened about 36 hours ago in the Bay Area. Here are two short videos captured early in the process. https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266987708854923265 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266987708854923265 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266988367905910784 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266988367905910784 You can always make up a scenario where a given approach or tool is the most economical and appropriate. It's a good diversion from the unpleasant facts of widespread inappropriate deployment that are happening now.
- Natsu 6y ago
  Did you see this? https://www.firefighternation.com/2020/06/01/richmond-police-officers-rescue-child-in-fire-rioters-blocked-firefighters/ https://www.firefighternation.com/2020/06/01/richmond-police...
pionar 6y ago
That's kind of a strawman. But, we have de-escalation tactics, riot shields, smoke canisters, and literally guns. If an officer wouldn't fire a gun, I think he shouldn't use tear gas.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  When considering a use-of-force continuum, I'd sure rather have a family member or myself be tear-gassed than shot. If you take an intermediate level away, sure you get fewer people tear-gassed, but I think you replace some of them with people being shot.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    But that is based on the assumption that force is the correct choice in the first place. Having more options on how to apply force avoids the fact that the correct choice is to de-escalate.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      It's almost always to de-escalate. But only almost. I'm willing to grant the police the power to appropriately use force and give them the broadest spectrum of options to match to the need. That's not dependent on them showing for a whole year with no force that they've thought about what they did wrong so far.
    - eitland 6y ago
      I started this subthread. I didn't want to discuss that. I wanted to discuss other options if one has to use force. I actually want to learn.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    It seems you went from tear gas to live fire without considering other options like firing over the head of a crowd, or using riot shields and batons to push people, or any of many other options. It seems to me that quite a few people just want to endorse whatever the police are doing and just attach some half-baked rationalization to it like 'do you prefer to be murdered.'
mumblemumble 6y ago
Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question. Given that the result is, among other things, to escalate the situation and increase civil unrest, it's hard for me to see your argument even that far. This is, at best, a smart way to achieve a stupid result. That's assuming that that's what the government was looking to achieve in the first place. If they were hoping to calm things down and restore order, then it's just stupid through and through.
- eitland 6y ago
  >> but lets for a moment think that we have a moment were we need to chase away a crowd of evil persons riotong and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children. > Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question. I tried really hard to create the perfect hypothetical situation to discuss the correct use of force instead of discussing if the use of force is correct. I failed pretty badly it seems and this time jnlike a number of other times I can't see why. At least you were polite, have my upvote :-)
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    I think the problem there is that, in the process of trying to create a hypothetical that is unambiguous, you ended up accidentally creating one that is a straw man. A better one that I can think of: Imagine a violent clash between protesters and counter-protesters. To me, that is potentially an appropriate use of tear gas, because things have escalated to the point where people are being harmed. I think, though, that, what's interesting with both my and your hypothetical, and markedly distinct with what's been happening in the news lately, is that we are not talking about a simple face-off between protestors and police. Perhaps that's cultural DNA? I would guess that virtually every natural born citizen of the USA studied the Boston Massacre in history class, and is consequently at least somewhat aware that violent retaliation against civilians - even an angry mob - doesn't have a great track record of actually making things better.
mschuster91 6y ago
Use police properly trained in de-escalation and vote for politicians that are not actively pouring gas in a fire. People are angry for a reason, Trevor Noah did a great part on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c Basically the white/rich majority and the police in the US has broken their end of the societal contract for decades and now people are fed up enough.
- ohlookabird 6y ago
  Exactly.
happytoexplain 6y ago
>Do you have a suggestion for a better way >evil persons rioting and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children This is a great and important question, and something that deserves way more R&D than it gets currently from the US's leviathan budget, but you should be aware that this lineup of statements is a bog standard bad-faith rhetorical tactic, and may be [mis]interpreted that way (i.e. this is often basically a paraphrase of "if you, Mr. Individual, do not have a solution right now, then you must be OK with the killing of innocent people").
- splitrocket 6y ago
  The research has been done. It's largely a solved problem, and has been since the 70's. The cops in the US just don't use those tools and tactics. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-protesters-and-police-safer-heres-why-departments-respond-with-force-anyway/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
  - treis 6y ago
    That requires that the protestors want the situation to deescalate as well. When they want to loot and burn buildings it doesn't work. Your options are to let them do that or use violence to stop them.
    - diag 6y ago
      The cops should never be escalating. That's the point.
    - curryst 6y ago
      This implies that a riot was the intended goal of the protestors. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine militarized police showing up gave the protestors warm and fuzzy feelings. The implied threat of violence amps up adrenaline, and it only takes one person doing something dumb for the police to violently swoop in and for everything to fall apart. At the very least, there should be a parity in force used. The current police strategy seems to be overwhelming force, which is both not working, and a moral failure in my opinion.
pnutjam 6y ago
"threatening to kill perfectly innocent children"? See, even you feel the need to ratchet up the situation to justify it's use. What you're positing is way beyond anything that's happening in the current situation where it's being used.
pjc50 6y ago
What do you do if you have a crowd of police threatening to kill perfectly innocent children? (Or at least use excessive force without regard for the presence of children: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-georgia-cops-critically-injure-baby-with-flash-bang-device-during-raid/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-georgia-cops-critically-... )
- eitland 6y ago
  Not what I'm asking. I'm trying to discuss the correct use of force, not if the force is being used correctly. I can often admit that what I wrote can be misunderstood but you and mdorazio seems to ho out of your way to misunderstand me. Why?
  - QuercusMax 6y ago
    The thing is, the cops STARTED this situation. They should have their weapons and equipment taken away, like in most civilized countries.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > I'm trying to discuss the correct use of force, not if the force is being used correctly. This sounds like a distinction without a difference?
    - eitland 6y ago
      Absolutely not: one is the question: if there exist a situation where the use of force is good, is teargas/cs gas a good way to apply that force instead of water cannons/ shields and sticks/etc? This is the question I tried to ask before getting downvoted heavily. The other question is if it is correct to use force. (Or based on the amount of downvotes and weird answers I have got it seems more like some people think I support police brutality while other think I use the "think of the children"-argument.)
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  I think eitland's question is reasonable clear, and seems honestly asked. The answer to your reframing seems likely to be that tear gas is better than rubber bullets, and that some sort of violence would be needed in order to stop the initial persistent violence. Something else that's key, IMO, to the underlying situation is the rule of law; that those at any political level committing crimes need swift, visible, justice to demonstrate democracy is being adhered to. It should be much harder for a person in a position of power to avoid a prosecution and loss of power ... the ease with which that is happening for some at the highest echelons of power, to me, shows that the system is corrupt and demonstrates that justice will not be delivered for us plebs. Why then submit to that system, when those in power do not.
tehwebguy 6y ago
I’m not sure if you’re aware but the police is the group that keeps murdering innocent children
- eitland 6y ago
  I was responding to this statement: > Right - that seems horribly wrong. It shouldn't be allowed for law enforcement either. I'm not trying to discuss if the police are doing the right thing, only te correct way of applying force.
curryst 6y ago
I disagree with the premise, I'm not aware of protestors threatening bystanders. And at the point that they're threatening to kill bystanders, that has progressed past rioting to terrorism. At that point, I think the full spectrum of force (including lethal force) is fair game. Now if we take a situation like the present one, where there is a mixture of peaceful protests, and riots that threaten property, I think the response is different. Firstly, immediate escalation from the police only begets escalation from protesters. Start with officers in uniform and somebody with a bullhorn. You shouldn't need riot gear unless the rioters are violent towards police. If the rioters start throwing things, upgrade to police in riot gear with shields and batons. Responding with tear gas and rubber bullets should be saved for if the police are utterly unable to contain the riots to within a certain area. Building barricades and waiting them out is a potentially effective option. Yes, there will be property damage, but that's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Build the barricades, arrest people as they leave the area. There are also other less than lethal options. Pepper spray seems like an effective system with minimal harmful side effects. There is an acoustic system that generates painfully loud sound (although I believe it comes with a risk of permanent hearing damage). Batons and riot shields seem like an effective system. Regular old vision obscuring smoke grenades would cut out some of the mob mentality since you can't see everyone else rioting.

mdorazio 6y ago

Did you really just use a “think of the children!” argument to justify tear gas? Not cool. To answer your question, basic tactics in crowd control using water cannons and riot shields with minimal force is plenty to handle crowds when you don’t deliberately antagonize them to violence.

eitland 6y ago
> Did you really just use a “think of the children!” argument to justify tear gas? Not cool. Way to misunderstand and derail an honest opinion in my opinion. Also I am not playing the "think of the children card", I'm just trying to create a situation where we can discuss - the correct use of force separate from the issue of - if the use of force is correct Feel free to come up with a better example. > To answer your question, basic tactics in crowd control using water cannons and riot shields with minimal force is plenty to handle crowds when you don’t deliberately antagonize them to violence. Let me explain: Why I wrote what I wrote: I've been subjected to tear gas while locked in and unable to escape until allowed (military training). I know very well what tear gas can feel like: coming out from the bunker I felt I was suffocating but I did as I was told and ran until it cleared up and lived to tell. Same with everyone else. So unlike many (most?) HNers I have actual personal experience with it. I've also worked with and around some high pressure pump systems (farming) and seen some demos of firefighting water cannons and my best guess is that water cannons will be more dangerous if you use enough force to have the same effect. After all, being knocked to the ground is really dangerous if you don't manage to protect your head. I'm open to learn though, preferably if someone who actually know what they are talking about (might very well be you, just explain how you know) will explain.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  You wrote a crowd of evil persons [rioting] and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children.) so you cannot say you are not playing the 'think of the children' card. It really seems like you are just trying to take over control of the conversation and make it run in the direction of normalizing the use of force. So unlike many (most?) HNers I have actual personal experience with it. Why are you assuming HNers are not politically active? I've been tear gassed 6 times since last Friday and this is not my first rodeo. I have a bunch of use gas grenades sitting on my desk whose manufacturers I'm tracing right now. Your military training experience is good as far as it goes, and I have heard similar stores from many police officers, but it seems to me you are overlooking many factors. You were selected for physical fitness and toughness before being admitted to military training and you knew that however unpleasant the experience that it was a controlled setting supervised by experienced people with full medical facilities and personnel available if anything went wrong. Imagine yourself part of a small crowd of people of mixed experience, age, mobility, and physical health. Some are prepared with masks or respirators, eye protection, and full-body clothing, others are in casual wear like shorts and t-shirts. You and they are standing on the sidewalk around an intersection, occasionally someone shouts an opinion or a few people chant something but mostly people are quiet. Halfway down each block is a line of police in riot gear with gas masks. At an order from their sergeant a grenadier on one street fires two or three small CS gas grenades toward where the street meets the intersection. People run or walk briskly away from that line of police and around the corner. Most are OK although a few are not handling it well and need help breathing or rinsing their eyes. Next the police farther up that street fire a couple of grenades at the street, causing the crowd to change direction. Some run across the street, if they can. The police on the 3rd and 4th streets repeat the process and now about half the crowd is off the sidewalk and in the intersection. Police throw a larger combination CS gas grenade into the middle of the intersection which explodes with a 175 dB bang, a bright flash of light, and a much larger and thicker cloud of CS gas. While everyone is variously indisposed, the lines of police move from down each block right up to the intersection, penning the crowd in from all sides. Than a recorded message is played declaring an illegal assembly because so many people have departed the sidewalk. The stated cause for this action was that some minutes earlier, when 2 streets were still open down to the next intersection, an unknown person drove up to and through the intersection, dinged another car, and down the street at a dangerous speed before making a sharp turn and driving away. It's unclear to me why this was considered the fault of the people standing on the sidewalk. This happened about 36 hours ago in the Bay Area. Here are two short videos captured early in the process. https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266987708854923265 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266987708854923265 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266988367905910784 https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1266988367905910784 You can always make up a scenario where a given approach or tool is the most economical and appropriate. It's a good diversion from the unpleasant facts of widespread inappropriate deployment that are happening now.
Natsu 6y ago
Did you see this? https://www.firefighternation.com/2020/06/01/richmond-police-officers-rescue-child-in-fire-rioters-blocked-firefighters/ https://www.firefighternation.com/2020/06/01/richmond-police...

pionar 6y ago

That's kind of a strawman. But, we have de-escalation tactics, riot shields, smoke canisters, and literally guns. If an officer wouldn't fire a gun, I think he shouldn't use tear gas.

sokoloff 6y ago
When considering a use-of-force continuum, I'd sure rather have a family member or myself be tear-gassed than shot. If you take an intermediate level away, sure you get fewer people tear-gassed, but I think you replace some of them with people being shot.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  But that is based on the assumption that force is the correct choice in the first place. Having more options on how to apply force avoids the fact that the correct choice is to de-escalate.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    It's almost always to de-escalate. But only almost. I'm willing to grant the police the power to appropriately use force and give them the broadest spectrum of options to match to the need. That's not dependent on them showing for a whole year with no force that they've thought about what they did wrong so far.
  - eitland 6y ago
    I started this subthread. I didn't want to discuss that. I wanted to discuss other options if one has to use force. I actually want to learn.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  It seems you went from tear gas to live fire without considering other options like firing over the head of a crowd, or using riot shields and batons to push people, or any of many other options. It seems to me that quite a few people just want to endorse whatever the police are doing and just attach some half-baked rationalization to it like 'do you prefer to be murdered.'

mumblemumble 6y ago

Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question. Given that the result is, among other things, to escalate the situation and increase civil unrest, it's hard for me to see your argument even that far. This is, at best, a smart way to achieve a stupid result. That's assuming that that's what the government was looking to achieve in the first place. If they were hoping to calm things down and restore order, then it's just stupid through and through.

eitland 6y ago
>> but lets for a moment think that we have a moment were we need to chase away a crowd of evil persons riotong and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children. > Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question. I tried really hard to create the perfect hypothetical situation to discuss the correct use of force instead of discussing if the use of force is correct. I failed pretty badly it seems and this time jnlike a number of other times I can't see why. At least you were polite, have my upvote :-)
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I think the problem there is that, in the process of trying to create a hypothetical that is unambiguous, you ended up accidentally creating one that is a straw man. A better one that I can think of: Imagine a violent clash between protesters and counter-protesters. To me, that is potentially an appropriate use of tear gas, because things have escalated to the point where people are being harmed. I think, though, that, what's interesting with both my and your hypothetical, and markedly distinct with what's been happening in the news lately, is that we are not talking about a simple face-off between protestors and police. Perhaps that's cultural DNA? I would guess that virtually every natural born citizen of the USA studied the Boston Massacre in history class, and is consequently at least somewhat aware that violent retaliation against civilians - even an angry mob - doesn't have a great track record of actually making things better.

mschuster91 6y ago

Use police properly trained in de-escalation and vote for politicians that are not actively pouring gas in a fire. People are angry for a reason, Trevor Noah did a great part on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c Basically the white/rich majority and the police in the US has broken their end of the societal contract for decades and now people are fed up enough.

ohlookabird 6y ago
Exactly.

happytoexplain 6y ago

>Do you have a suggestion for a better way >evil persons rioting and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children This is a great and important question, and something that deserves way more R&D than it gets currently from the US's leviathan budget, but you should be aware that this lineup of statements is a bog standard bad-faith rhetorical tactic, and may be [mis]interpreted that way (i.e. this is often basically a paraphrase of "if you, Mr. Individual, do not have a solution right now, then you must be OK with the killing of innocent people").

splitrocket 6y ago
The research has been done. It's largely a solved problem, and has been since the 70's. The cops in the US just don't use those tools and tactics. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-protesters-and-police-safer-heres-why-departments-respond-with-force-anyway/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-pro...
- treis 6y ago
  That requires that the protestors want the situation to deescalate as well. When they want to loot and burn buildings it doesn't work. Your options are to let them do that or use violence to stop them.
  - diag 6y ago
    The cops should never be escalating. That's the point.
  - curryst 6y ago
    This implies that a riot was the intended goal of the protestors. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine militarized police showing up gave the protestors warm and fuzzy feelings. The implied threat of violence amps up adrenaline, and it only takes one person doing something dumb for the police to violently swoop in and for everything to fall apart. At the very least, there should be a parity in force used. The current police strategy seems to be overwhelming force, which is both not working, and a moral failure in my opinion.

pnutjam 6y ago

"threatening to kill perfectly innocent children"? See, even you feel the need to ratchet up the situation to justify it's use. What you're positing is way beyond anything that's happening in the current situation where it's being used.

pjc50 6y ago

What do you do if you have a crowd of police threatening to kill perfectly innocent children? (Or at least use excessive force without regard for the presence of children: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-georgia-cops-critically-injure-baby-with-flash-bang-device-during-raid/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-georgia-cops-critically-... )

eitland 6y ago
Not what I'm asking. I'm trying to discuss the correct use of force, not if the force is being used correctly. I can often admit that what I wrote can be misunderstood but you and mdorazio seems to ho out of your way to misunderstand me. Why?
- QuercusMax 6y ago
  The thing is, the cops STARTED this situation. They should have their weapons and equipment taken away, like in most civilized countries.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > I'm trying to discuss the correct use of force, not if the force is being used correctly. This sounds like a distinction without a difference?
  - eitland 6y ago
    Absolutely not: one is the question: if there exist a situation where the use of force is good, is teargas/cs gas a good way to apply that force instead of water cannons/ shields and sticks/etc? This is the question I tried to ask before getting downvoted heavily. The other question is if it is correct to use force. (Or based on the amount of downvotes and weird answers I have got it seems more like some people think I support police brutality while other think I use the "think of the children"-argument.)
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
I think eitland's question is reasonable clear, and seems honestly asked. The answer to your reframing seems likely to be that tear gas is better than rubber bullets, and that some sort of violence would be needed in order to stop the initial persistent violence. Something else that's key, IMO, to the underlying situation is the rule of law; that those at any political level committing crimes need swift, visible, justice to demonstrate democracy is being adhered to. It should be much harder for a person in a position of power to avoid a prosecution and loss of power ... the ease with which that is happening for some at the highest echelons of power, to me, shows that the system is corrupt and demonstrates that justice will not be delivered for us plebs. Why then submit to that system, when those in power do not.

tehwebguy 6y ago

I’m not sure if you’re aware but the police is the group that keeps murdering innocent children

eitland 6y ago
I was responding to this statement: > Right - that seems horribly wrong. It shouldn't be allowed for law enforcement either. I'm not trying to discuss if the police are doing the right thing, only te correct way of applying force.

curryst 6y ago

I disagree with the premise, I'm not aware of protestors threatening bystanders. And at the point that they're threatening to kill bystanders, that has progressed past rioting to terrorism. At that point, I think the full spectrum of force (including lethal force) is fair game. Now if we take a situation like the present one, where there is a mixture of peaceful protests, and riots that threaten property, I think the response is different. Firstly, immediate escalation from the police only begets escalation from protesters. Start with officers in uniform and somebody with a bullhorn. You shouldn't need riot gear unless the rioters are violent towards police. If the rioters start throwing things, upgrade to police in riot gear with shields and batons. Responding with tear gas and rubber bullets should be saved for if the police are utterly unable to contain the riots to within a certain area. Building barricades and waiting them out is a potentially effective option. Yes, there will be property damage, but that's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Build the barricades, arrest people as they leave the area. There are also other less than lethal options. Pepper spray seems like an effective system with minimal harmful side effects. There is an acoustic system that generates painfully loud sound (although I believe it comes with a risk of permanent hearing damage). Batons and riot shields seem like an effective system. Regular old vision obscuring smoke grenades would cut out some of the mob mentality since you can't see everyone else rioting.