ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Stephen Coleman - Ethicist
Stephen Coleman studies applied ethics, particularly the ethics of military and police force, and their application to human rights.

Why you should listen
Dr. Stephen Cole­man is Senior Lec­turer in Ethics and Lead­er­ship and Vin­cent Fair­fax Foun­da­tion Fel­low in the School of Human­i­ties and Social Sci­ences, UNSW@ADFA.
 
Coleman works in a diverse range of areas in applied ethics, includ­ing mil­i­tary ethics, police ethics, med­ical ethics, and the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of human rights. He has pub­lished and pre­sented in var­i­ous forms in Aus­tralia, the United States, the United King­dom, New Zealand and Hong Kong. He recently spent an aca­d­e­mic year as the Res­i­dent Fel­low at the Stock­dale Cen­ter for Eth­i­cal Lead­er­ship at the United States Naval Acad­emy, where he was part of a large research project exam­in­ing the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of var­i­ous new and devel­op­ing mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies. This project helped to brief the Depart­ment of Defense, the US Con­gress and the White House on these issues.
 
He can also make bal­loon and origami ani­mals, jug­gle, breathe fire and ride a uni­cy­cle, though not all at the same time. 
More profile about the speaker
Stephen Coleman | Speaker | TED.com
TEDxCanberra

Stephen Coleman: Non-lethal weapons, a moral hazard?

Filmed:
538,518 views

Pepper spray, Tasers, tear gas, rubber bullets -- these "non-lethal" weapons are being used by more and more local police forces, as well as military forces brought in to control civilian crowds and other situations. Despite their name, non-lethal weapons have been known to cause deaths ... and as Stephen Coleman suggests, there are other, more insidious hazards as well. He explores the complex ethics -- and the unexpected consequences -- of using non-lethal weapons to control civilians.
- Ethicist
Stephen Coleman studies applied ethics, particularly the ethics of military and police force, and their application to human rights. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

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What I want to talk to you about today
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is some of the problems that the military of the Western world --
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Australia, United States, U.K. and so on --
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face in some of the deployments
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that they're dealing with in the modern world at this time.
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If you think about the sorts of things
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that we've sent Australian military personnel to in recent years,
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we've got obvious things like Iraq and Afghanistan,
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but you've also got things like East Timor
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and the Solomon Islands and so on.
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And a lot of these deployments
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that we're actually sending military personnel to these days
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aren't traditional wars.
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In fact, a lot of the jobs
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that we're asking the military personnel to do in these situations
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are ones that, in their own countries, in Australia, the United States and so on,
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would actually be done by police officers.
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And so there's a bunch of problems that come up
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for military personnel in these situations,
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because they're doing things that they haven't really been trained for,
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and they're doing things
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that those who do them in their own countries
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are trained very differently for
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and equipped very differently for.
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Now there's a bunch of reasons why
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we actually do send military personnel
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rather than police to do these jobs.
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If Australia had to send a thousand people tomorrow
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to West Papua for example,
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we don't have a thousand police officers hanging around
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that could just go tomorrow
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and we do have a thousand soldiers that could go.
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So when we have to send someone, we send the military --
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because they're there, they're available
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and, heck, they're used to going off and doing these things
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and living by themselves
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and not having all this extra support.
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So they are able to do it in that sense.
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But they aren't trained in the same way that police officers are
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and they're certainly not equipped in the same way police officers are.
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And so this has raised a bunch of problems for them
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when dealing with these sorts of issues.
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One particular thing that's come up
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that I am especially interested in
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is the question of whether,
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when we're sending military personnel to do these sorts of jobs,
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we ought to be equipping them differently,
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and in particular, whether we ought to be giving them access
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to some of the sorts of non-lethal weapons that police have.
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Since they're doing some of these same jobs,
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maybe they should have some of those things.
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And of course, there's a range of places
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where you'd think those things would be really useful.
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So for example, when you've got military checkpoints.
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If people are approaching these checkpoints
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and the military personnel there are unsure
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whether this person's hostile or not.
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Say this person approaching here,
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and they say, "Well is this a suicide bomber or not?
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Have they got something hidden under their clothing? What's going to happen?"
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They don't know whether this person's hostile or not.
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If this person doesn't follow directions,
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then they may end up shooting them
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and then find out afterward
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either, yes, we shot the right person,
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or, no, this was just an innocent person
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who didn't understand what was going on.
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So if they had non-lethal weapons
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then they would say, "Well we can use them in that sort of situation.
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If we shoot someone who wasn't hostile,
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at least we haven't killed them."
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Another situation.
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This photo is actually from one of the missions
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in the Balkans in the late 1990s.
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Situation's a little bit different
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where perhaps they know someone who's hostile,
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where they've got someone shooting at them
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or doing something else that's clearly hostile, throwing rocks, whatever.
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But if they respond, there's a range of other people around,
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who are innocent people who might also get hurt --
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be collateral damage that the military often doesn't want to talk about.
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So again, they would say, "Well if we have access to non-lethal weapons,
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if we've got someone we know is hostile,
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we can do something to deal with them
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and know that if we hit anyone else around the place,
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at least, again, we're not going to kill them."
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Another suggestion has been,
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since we're putting so many robots in the field,
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we can see the time coming
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where they're actually going to be sending robots out in the field that are autonomous.
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They're going to make their own decisions about who to shoot and who not to shoot
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without a human in the loop.
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And so the suggestion is, well hey,
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if we're going to send robots out and allow them to do this,
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maybe it would be a good idea, again, with these things
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if they were armed with non-lethal weapons
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so that if the robot makes a bad decision and shoots the wrong person,
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again, they haven't actually killed them.
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Now there's a whole range of different sorts of non-lethal weapons,
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some of which are obviously available now,
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some of which they're developing.
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So you've got traditional things like pepper spray,
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O.C. spray up at the top there,
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or Tasers over here.
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The one on the top right here is actually a dazzling laser
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intended to just blind the person momentarily
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and disorient them.
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You've got non-lethal shotgun rounds
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that contain rubber pellets
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instead of the traditional metal ones.
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And this one in the middle here, the large truck,
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is actually called the Active Denial System --
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something the U.S. military is working on at the moment.
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It's essentially a big microwave transmitter.
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It's sort of your classic idea of a heat ray.
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It goes out to a really long distance,
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compared to any of these other sorts of things.
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And anybody who is hit with this
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feels this sudden burst of heat
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and just wants to get out of the way.
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It is a lot more sophisticated than a microwave oven,
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but it is basically boiling the water molecules
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in the very surface level of your skin.
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So you feel this massive heat,
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and you go, "I want to get out of the way."
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And they're thinking, well this will be really useful
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in places like where we need to clear a crowd out of a particular area,
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if the crowd is being hostile.
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If we need to keep people away from a particular place,
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we can do that with these sorts of things.
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So obviously there's a whole range of different sorts
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of non-lethal weapons we could give military personnel
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and there's a whole range of situations
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where they're looking a them and saying, "Hey, these things could be really useful."
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But as I said,
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the military and the police
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are very different.
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Yes, you don't have to look very hard at this
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to recognize the fact that they might be very different.
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In particular,
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the attitude to the use of force
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and the way they're trained to use force
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is especially different.
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The police --
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and knowing because I've actually helped to train police --
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police, in particular Western jurisdictions at least,
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are trained to de-escalate force,
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to try and avoid using force
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wherever possible,
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and to use lethal force
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only as an absolute last resort.
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Military personnel are being trained for war,
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so they're trained that, as soon as things go bad,
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their first response is lethal force.
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The moment the fecal matter hits the rotating turbine,
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you can start shooting at people.
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So their attitudes
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to the use of lethal force are very different,
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and I think it's fairly obvious
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that their attitude to the use of non-lethal weapons
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would also be very different from what it is with the police.
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And since we've already had so many problems
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with police use of non-lethal weapons in various ways,
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I thought it would be a really good idea to look at some of those things
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and try to relate it to the military context.
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And I was really surprised when I started to do this,
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to see that, in fact,
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even those people who were advocating the use of non-lethal weapons by the military
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hadn't actually done that.
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They generally seem to think,
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"Well, why would we care what's happened with the police?
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We're looking at something different,"
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and didn't seem to recognize, in fact,
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they were looking at pretty much the same stuff.
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So I actually started to investigate some of those issues
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and have a look
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at the way that police use non-lethal weapons when they're introduced
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and some of the problems that might arise
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out of those sorts of things
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when they actually do introduce them.
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And of course, being Australian,
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I started looking at stuff in Australia,
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knowing, again, from my own experience about various times
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when non-lethal weapons have been introduced in Australia.
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So one of the things I particularly looked at
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was the use of O.C. spray,
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oleoresin capsicum spray, pepper spray,
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by Australian police
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and seeing when that had been introduced, what had happened
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and those sorts of issues.
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And one study that I found,
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a particularly interesting one,
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was actually in Queensland,
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because they had a trial period for the use of pepper spray
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before they actually introduced it more broadly.
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And I went and had a look at some of the figures here.
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Now when they introduced O.C. spray in Queensland,
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they were really explicit.
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The police minister had a whole heap of public statements made about it.
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They were saying, "This is explicitly intended
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to give police an option
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between shouting and shooting.
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This is something they can use instead of a firearm
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in those situations where they would have previously had to shoot someone."
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So I went and looked at all of these police shooting figures.
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And you can't actually find them very easily
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for individual Australian states.
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I could only find these ones.
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This is from a Australian Institute of Criminology report.
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As you can see from the fine print, if you can read it at the top:
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"Police shooting deaths" means not just people who have been shot by police,
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but people who have shot themselves in the presence of police.
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But this is the figures across the entire country.
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And the red arrow represents the point
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where Queensland actually said,
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"Yes, this is where we're going to give all police officers across the entire state
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access to O.C. spray."
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So you can see there were six deaths sort of leading up to it
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every year for a number of years.
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There was a spike, of course, a few years before,
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but that wasn't actually Queensland.
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Anyone know where that was? Wasn't Port Arthur, no.
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Victoria? Yes, correct.
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That spike was all Victoria.
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So it wasn't that Queensland had a particular problem
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with deaths from police shootings and so on.
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So six shootings across the whole country,
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fairly consistently over the years before.
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So the next two years were the years they studied -- 2001, 2002.
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Anyone want to take a stab at the number of times,
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given how they've introduced this,
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the number of times police in Queensland used O.C. spray in that period?
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Hundreds? One, three.
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Thousand is getting better.
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Explicitly introduced
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as an alternative to the use of lethal force --
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an alternative between shouting and shooting.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here
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and say that if Queensland police didn't have O.C. spray,
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they wouldn't have shot 2,226 people
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in those two years.
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In fact, if you have a look
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at the studies that they were looking at,
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the material they were collecting and examining,
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you can see the suspects were only armed
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in about 15 percent of cases
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where O.C. spray was used.
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It was routinely being used in this period,
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and, of course, still is routinely used --
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because there were no complaints about it,
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not within the context of this study anyway --
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it was routinely being used
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to deal with people who were violent,
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who were potentially violent,
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and also quite frequently used
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to deal with people who were simply
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passively non-compliant.
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This person is not doing anything violent,
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but they just won't do what we want them to.
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They're not obeying the directions that we're giving them,
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so we'll give them a shot of the O.C. spray.
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That'll speed them up. Everything will work out better that way.
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This was something explicitly introduced
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to be an alternative to firearms,
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but it's being routinely used
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to deal with a whole range
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of other sorts of problems.
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Now one of the particular issues that comes up
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with military use of non-lethal weapons --
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and people when they're actually saying, "Well hey, there might be some problems" --
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there's a couple of particular problems that get focused on.
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One of those problems
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is that non-lethal weapons may be used indiscriminately.
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One of the fundamental principles of military use of force
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is that you have to be discriminate.
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You have to be careful about who you're shooting at.
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So one of the problems that's been suggested with non-lethal weapons
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is that they might be used indiscriminately --
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that you use them against a whole range of people
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because you don't have to worry so much anymore.
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And in fact, one particular instance
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where I think that actually happens where you can look at it
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was the Dubrovka Theatre siege in Moscow in 2002,
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which probably a lot of you, unlike most of my students at ADFA,
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are actually old enough to remember.
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So Chechens had come in and taken control of the theater.
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They were holding something like 700 people hostage.
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They'd released a bunch of people,
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but they still had about 700 people hostage.
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And the Russian special military police,
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special forces, Spetsnaz,
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came in and actually stormed the theater.
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And the way they did it was to pump the whole thing full of anesthetic gas.
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And it turned out
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that lots of these hostages actually died
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as a result of inhaling the gas.
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It was used indiscriminately.
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They pumped the whole theater full of the gas.
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And it's no surprise that people died,
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because you don't know how much of this gas
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each person is going to inhale,
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what position they're going to fall in
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when they become unconscious and so on.
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There were, in fact, only a couple of people who got shot
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in this episode.
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So when they had a look at it afterward,
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there were only a couple of people
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who'd apparently been shot by the hostage takers
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or shot by the police forces
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coming in and trying to deal with the situation.
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Virtually everybody that got killed
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got killed from inhaling the gas.
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The final toll of hostages
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is a little unclear,
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but it's certainly a few more than that,
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because there were other people who died over the next few days.
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So this was one particular problem they talked about,
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that it might be used indiscriminately.
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Second problem that people sometimes talk about
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with military use of non-lethal weapons,
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and it's actually the reason why in the chemical weapons convention,
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it's very clear that you can't use riot control agents
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as a weapon of warfare,
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the problem with that is that it's seen that sometimes
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non-lethal weapons might actually be used, not as an alternative to lethal force,
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but as a lethal force multiplier --
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that you use non-lethal weapons first
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so that your lethal weapons will actually be more effective.
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The people you're going to be shooting at
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aren't going to be able to get out of the way.
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They're not going to be aware of what's happening and you can kill them better.
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And in fact, that's exactly what happened here.
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The hostage takers who had been rendered unconscious by the gas
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were not taken into custody,
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they were simply shot in the head.
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So this non-lethal weapon
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was being used, in fact, in this case
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as a lethal force multiplier
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to make killing more effective
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in this particular situation.
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Another problem that I just want to quickly mention
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is that there's a whole heap of problems
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with the way that people actually get taught
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to use non-lethal weapons
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and get trained about them and then get tested and so on.
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Because they get tested in nice, safe environments.
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And people get taught to use them in nice, safe environments
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like this, where you can see exactly what's going on.
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The person who's spraying the O.C. spray is wearing a rubber glove
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to make sure they don't get contaminated and so on.
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But they don't ever get used like that.
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They get used out in the real world,
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like in Texas, like this.
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I confess, this particular case
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was actually one that piqued my interest in this.
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It happened while I was working as a research fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy.
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And news reports started coming up about this situation
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where this woman was arguing with the police officer.
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She wasn't violent.
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In fact, he was probably six inches taller than me,
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and she was about this tall.
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And eventually she said to him
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"Well I'm going to get back in my car."
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And he says, "If you get back into your car, I'm going to tase you."
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And she says, "Oh, go ahead. Tase me." And so he does.
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And it's all captured by the video camera
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running in the front of the police car.
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So she's 72,
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and it's seen that this is the most appropriate way of dealing with her.
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And other examples of the same sorts of things
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with other people where you think
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where you think, "Is this really an appropriate way to use non-lethal weapons?"
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"Police chief fires Taser into 14 year-old girl's head."
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"She was running away. What else was I suppose to do?"
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(Laughter)
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Or Florida:
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"Police Taser six year-old boy at elementary school."
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And they clearly learned a lot from it
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because in the same district,
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"Police review policy after children shocked:
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2nd child shocked by Taser stun gun within weeks."
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Same police district.
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Another child within weeks of Tasering the six year-old boy.
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Just in case you think
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it's only going to happen in the United States,
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it happened in Canada as well.
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And a colleague of mine
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sent me this one from London.
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But my personal favorite of these ones, I have to confess,
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does actually come from the United States:
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"Officers Taser 86 year-old disabled woman in her bed."
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I checked the reports on this one.
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I looked at it. I was really surprised.
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Apparently she took up a more threatening position in her bed.
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15:56
(Laughter)
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I kid you not. That's exactly what it said.
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"She took up a more threatening position in her bed."
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Okay.
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But I'd remind you what I'm talking about,
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I'm talking about military uses of non-lethal weapons.
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So why is this relevant?
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Because police are actually more restrained in the use of force
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than the military are.
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They're trained to be more restrained in the use of force than the military are.
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They're trained to think more, to try and de-escalate.
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So if you have these problems with police officers with non-lethal weapons,
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what on earth would make you think
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it's going to be better with military personnel?
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The last thing that I would just like to say,
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when I'm talking to the police
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about what a perfect non-lethal weapon would look like,
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they almost inevitably say the same thing.
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They say, "Well, it's got to be something that's nasty enough
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16:42
that people don't want to be hit with this weapon.
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16:44
So if you threaten to use it,
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people are going to comply with it,
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but it's also going to be something
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that doesn't leave any lasting effects."
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In other words, your perfect non-lethal weapon
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is something that's perfect for abuse.
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What would these guys have done
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if they'd had access to Tasers
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or to a manned, portable version
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of the Active Denial System --
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a small heat ray that you can use on people
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and not worry about it.
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So I think, yes, there may be ways
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that non-lethal weapons are going to be great in these situations,
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but there's also a whole heap of problems
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that need to be considered as well.
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Thanks very much.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Stephen Coleman - Ethicist
Stephen Coleman studies applied ethics, particularly the ethics of military and police force, and their application to human rights.

Why you should listen
Dr. Stephen Cole­man is Senior Lec­turer in Ethics and Lead­er­ship and Vin­cent Fair­fax Foun­da­tion Fel­low in the School of Human­i­ties and Social Sci­ences, UNSW@ADFA.
 
Coleman works in a diverse range of areas in applied ethics, includ­ing mil­i­tary ethics, police ethics, med­ical ethics, and the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of human rights. He has pub­lished and pre­sented in var­i­ous forms in Aus­tralia, the United States, the United King­dom, New Zealand and Hong Kong. He recently spent an aca­d­e­mic year as the Res­i­dent Fel­low at the Stock­dale Cen­ter for Eth­i­cal Lead­er­ship at the United States Naval Acad­emy, where he was part of a large research project exam­in­ing the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of var­i­ous new and devel­op­ing mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies. This project helped to brief the Depart­ment of Defense, the US Con­gress and the White House on these issues.
 
He can also make bal­loon and origami ani­mals, jug­gle, breathe fire and ride a uni­cy­cle, though not all at the same time. 
More profile about the speaker
Stephen Coleman | Speaker | TED.com