In this video I think it's demonstrated incredibly powerfully what importance needs to be placed upon anti-horse tools.
The horses do the bulk of the work in creating space that allows the police line to tighten the noose here. Without them they never would have controlled these crowds with people on multiple sides of them. They could not have maintained control.
There must be simply and effective methods to spook these horses without causing a danger to them. Something that could be deployed that would make the riders tell their superiors "we can't deploy because the horses would be spooked by x".
Anyway. What are other people's thoughts here? Obviously this protest was unprepared for a fight (although several police have been hospitalised). What could small groups of 1-5 have done in the wider engagement to make things go differently?
I'm thinking drones or laser pointers.
Or laser pointers on drones?
Drones and laser pointers seems like a good shout. Laser pointers in particular because I think it cops may just refuse to deploy the horses. Are there any instances of police deploying horses against crowds with laser pointers?
Very easy to bring a box of 50-100 of them to a protest then hand em out too.
I think there's a solid future for lasers in protesting; blinding optics of vehicles/surveillance would be another use-case.
Also, once you've disseminated a bunch of low-end lasers to a crowd, you could mingle among them and get out high mW lasers for some actual damage (in minecraft). Very easy to blind a person temporarily or even permanently with some home-built, handheld laser - over a considerable distance.
Right exactly. Once there are low end lasers distributed police must assume that there might be high end lasers in use. It becomes impossible to tell and they must plan their tactics according to the dangerous scenario.
I don't know what the laws are like in the UK, but in the US using laser pointers can land you with aggravated assault charges, which are even more severe if a police officer is the target.
They can be a useful tool, but the consequences if caught using one are basically the same as carrying a weapon.
I don't think laser pointers would work, as the horses usually have blinders