You may recall that in May Donald Trump threatened DC demonstrators, outraged by the murder of George Floyd, with “ominous weapons” and “vicious dogs” after the White House went into lockdown amid nationwide protests over the unarmed black man’s death.
Now, the Washington Post reports on some of those weapons, sought by federal officials to disperse protesters: “Just before noon on June 1, the Defense Department’s top military police officer in the Washington region sent an email to officers in the D.C. National Guard. It asked whether the unit had a Long Range Acoustic Device, also known as an LRAD, or a microwave-like weapon called the Active Denial System, which was designed by the military to make people feel like their skin is burning when in range of its invisible rays. The technology, also called a ‘heat ray,’ was developed to disperse large crowds in the early 2000s but was shelved amid concerns about its effectiveness, safety and the ethics of using it on human beings.”
A 2015 report on the “heat ray,” which the Pentagon was “reluctant” to use in Iraq.
If you recall, Trump’s feds instead used tear gas on the peaceful protesters so he could head across the park to do a photo op with a Bible.
