It's another round of large protest events, so I'm going to do something I've done on in the past. A thread on police less-lethals, how to spot them and how cops use them. This is going to include a lot of imagery of weapons, and descriptions of how they can injure or kill someone.

First up is hand-thrown grenades. There are a lot of different types of less-lethal or "crowd control" grenades. The three popular types are currently flash bangs, gas and stingball/stinger. Flash bangs are literally a small explosive charge inside a shell that lets the sound/concussive force out, but doesn't produce shrapnel. Some are perforated plastic, some are metal that banana-peels out upon detonation.

You've probably seen flash bangs on TV. What they don't tell you is that they're some of the most dangerous less-lethals. People get burned by them pretty frequently in no-knock raids, and some can cause injuries bad enough to cost you a limb, which did happen during the NoDAPL protests. (The cops were cooking grenades off so they'd detonate earlier, and one destroyed a water protector's arm.)

@Zero_Democracy Holy frack thats fracked. We bet the Police dont get in trouble for it at all though.

@Freylet They sometimes get sued and pay out as the cost of doing business, but that's it. Usually when it happens during no-knock raids, and there's less anonymity and chaos for individual cops to hide behind.