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‘These weapons can kill people’Less than lethal teargassedProjectiles that release powder designed to burn the eyes and throat. Flashbang grenades. Teargas. Launchers that resemble semi-automatic rifles.Often dubbed “less lethal”, these weapons can cause serious injuries or even death if misused – but they are deployed by police against crowds in Australia with little scrutiny.“All of these weapons can kill people,” says Rohini Haar, a medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights who has researched their health impacts on protesters around the world.Haar says there is “almost zero” regulation globally of the industry that produces these weapons. In Australia, there are no nationally enforced standards for their use. In some states, police go to great lengths not to share what weapons they have or how they’re used.
In Victoria, police have refused to publicly provide the make and model of their rubber bullets and other weapons even to the state’s parliamentarians due to “operational and community safety considerations”.
Contracts worth millions for these weapons are often with third-party distributors rather than the manufacturers, obscuring what police have access to.
