Federal officers in Portland may have been permanently blinded by lasers

[JDD]

While I’ve worked with plenty of high quality grads, I’ve never actually been to FLETC. And I agree we as LE should be constrained by the Constitution. My point is the use of lasers in the eyes/face allows for deadly force under the Constitution. I suspect we probably agree on more than we disagree but I think we’ve derailed this thread far enough.

I apologize for the assumption, but yes, I think we are speaking at cross purposes.

Likewise, I agree that a laser that is burning out retinas and causing severe and irreparable damage definitely meets the severe bodily harm threshold that can be used to justify force.

The issue that I see is that the laser pointer issue falls into the same bucket of problems as toy guns; Items that have the appearance of something that can cause serious harm, but that may or may not be capable of doing so. Except, potentially even more of a fuzzy area, since there are plenty of lasers pointers that apparently don't cause lasting harm, even if they temporarily blind or dazzle. It seems like a nightmare to justify a split second use of force decision without knowing in advance the kind of detailed information about the device that @trailrunner posted about the specific device that an individual is using (or trying to retroactively justify a use of force based on whatever is found afterword).

Interestingly enough, a few of the articles I was reading about the Hong Kong protests had a fair bit of discussion from photographers who were having camera equipment burned out by lasers. Rather than using them primarily to attack the police, it looked like a lot of the folks there were using them to disrupt security cameras and the handheld cameras carried by law enforcement and press who were documenting the events for their own purposes. These kind of lasers have the potential to make permanently disabling security cameras that are mounted in inaccessible places much easier for malicious actors.

[FNFAN]

Hopefully they will get tired of failing at the Federal property, and start burning and destroying Municipal and commercial buildings. I bet that will motivate the city council. Or the voter's.

I suppose we'll see! Glad to hear those Portland nitwits are running out of steam. I think we're just starting here.

[wvincent]

I suppose we'll see! Glad to hear those Portland nitwits are running out of steam. I think we're just starting here.

Good luck man!
On the Portland feeds, BLM and Antifa are getting pretty ugly with each other. Gotta love faction fighting.
Maybe we'll get lucky and they will devour each other.

[Casual Friday]

I know someone who bought a made in China, green laser on Amazon, for his USPSA PCC, that he said was “way brighter and cost less than $100.” 5 PF dollars that it is illegally strong.

My nephew was an airsofter prior to getting into real guns. He showed me a website where you could buy a PEQ 15 clone, labeled as a spare battery holder. There was no mention on the website of it actually being a functioning laser or light, but it had a visible and IR laser, I don't recall if it had an illuminator. It cost $300. After a little digging, I found a thread on an airsoft forum where they compared one of these "battery holders" to a real PEQ 15 and they were very similar in performance. Outside of the legal ramifications of them, they're not very durable and don't hold up over a period of time, but it shows what is out there.

I think that is a valid concern for sure. I had a “laser pointer” arrive from China that was at least 10x the rating, and probably 100x. It could cut electrical tape, and was completely unusable for lectures.

I was eating dinner when I came across your post and I strangled on milk laughing so hard at the bold part. My wife, kids, and puppy thought I was dying for a minute.

[Clusterfrack]

...I had a “laser pointer” arrive from China that was at least 10x the rating, and probably 100x. It could cut electrical tape, and was completely unusable for lectures.

I was eating dinner when I came across your post and I strangled on milk laughing so hard at the bold part. My wife, kids, and puppy thought I was dying for a minute.

LOL! The thing is, I really wanted it to work for big lectures. In my mind, it was going to be the BEST LASER POINTER EVER. But even in a huge lecture hall with lights on, the beam was brightly visible and hard to look at. On the screen, it looked like the fucking sun and there was no way to read anything. Students visibly cringed.

[WOLFIE]

My heart goes out to LE who may be hit with a laser. I am fortunate to not be working “peaceful protests”. (Anyone trying to take away vision from someone else is mean and an actual deplorable). This may seem like an idea that will not work well as in a dumb idea.. I am going to ask anyway. Can goggles be designed / made with multiple lenses to block all harmful lasers and still enable the officer to see?

[trailrunner]

My nephew was an airsofter prior to getting into real guns. He showed me a website where you could buy a PEQ 15 clone, labeled as a spare battery holder. There was no mention on the website of it actually being a functioning laser or light, but it had a visible and IR laser, I don't recall if it had an illuminator. It cost $300. After a little digging, I found a thread on an airsoft forum where they compared one of these "battery holders" to a real PEQ 15 and they were very similar in performance. Outside of the legal ramifications of them, they're not very durable and don't hold up over a period of time, but it shows what is out there.

There's too much stuff available, legally and illegally. I helped out very peripherally in a few import, export, and illegal milsurplus sales, and would've loved to do more. That stuff pisses me off.

[HCM]

Federal officers in Portland suffered 113 eye injuries from lasers, DHS official says

https://nypost.com/2020/08/04/federa...1xkMLarnLziixY

“A tactic that quickly developed among the violent participants in these activities was to cut those holes in the shields and instead of standing back at the back of a crowd and aiming at the eyes of officers, they will also now bring the shield up close and bring it right up into you. And so the intensity of the strike to the eyes of the officer is much more significant,” Cuccinelli said.

The Homeland Security leader, a lawyer who has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, said, “For those of you who are engineers like me, it’s a square function. So if you’re twice as far away, it’s a quarter of the energy.”

Cuccinelli said lasers create problems for officers, who cannot look toward the beams to identify suspects. He said the lasers are green because the light is brighter. Overall, there have been 277 injuries to 140 individual officers, he said. Hearing damage is the second most-common officer injury.

“The human eye sees the green part of the spectrum more brightly than say red, something like 10 times brighter,” Cuccinelli explained.

[iWander]

One could almost imagine a cheap, light-weight, adhesive-backed aluminized specular reflector array, yielding nearly 100% return energy, that could be affixed to a helmet in the field in seconds. Cause that would be cool.

Don't want nothin', don't start nothin'.

Here you go [emoji848]

[whomever]

My heart goes out to LE who may be hit with a laser. I am fortunate to not be working “peaceful protests”. (Anyone trying to take away vision from someone else is mean and an actual deplorable). This may seem like an idea that will not work well as in a dumb idea.. I am going to ask anyway. Can goggles be designed / made with multiple lenses to block all harmful lasers and still enable the officer to see?

I know bupkis, but saw this a few days ago. No idea if it's good advice or not:

https://gunfreezone.net/advice-about-laser-eyewear/

My tl;dr of that if you are working with a specific wavelength, you can make lenses that are nearly transparent but that still block that one wavelength, but if the wavelengths vary a lot you end up blocking enough of the spectrum that not very much is left to see with.