Mayor Ted Wheeler on Friday night directed Portland police not to use sonic warning tones to control crowds after officers activated it at the tail end of an all-night protest and signaled he’s in favor of a 30-day ban on tear gas like Seattle.
The developments came as the mayor faced renewed pressure to address police tactics during protests against police brutality and racial injustice that have brought thousands to downtown.
He tweeted out the ban on the warning sounds without fanfare then a short time later, facing pointed questions from a protest crowd in the city’s downtown, switched gears on tear gas after saying at an earlier news conference that he wasn’t ready to outlaw tear gas at demonstrations without more discussion.
The flurry of announcements followed a confrontation at 1:30 a.m. Friday when police blasted a piercing sound from a supervisor’s SUV in a rare activation of the loud warning tone from the bureau’s Long Range Acoustic Device, known as LRAD. The powerful portable speaker was developed for the U.S. military but has been increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to break up crowds.
Officers used the warning sound to try to deter a disruptive group without harming peaceful demonstrators, Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis said.
It marked only the second time police here have blared the warning tone and drew criticism after days of condemnation over the use of tear gas on demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd, who was pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer with a knee to his neck.
Police supervisors offered a quick demonstration of the sound system and warning signal for reporters about 4:30 p.m. Friday outside East Precinct.
About two hours later, Wheeler sent a message on Twitter: “Effective immediately, I have directed @Portlandpolice to use LRAD only to share information and not as a sonic warning tone function.’’
The powerful portable alarm has drawn criticism as another example of excessive force. It can cause long-term hearing loss, detractors say, and is the subject of a pending excessive force lawsuit in federal court in New York.
Police here first used the high-pitched, pulsing sound from its LRAD Model 458XL system during the 2016 mass demonstrations after Donald Trump’s election, Davis said.
The bureau bought three of the devices several years ago, mainly to serve as loudspeakers to broadcast commands during large demonstrations. The purchase followed criticism of its car-based PA systems as unclear or not loud enough for many in the crowd to hear.
Police triggered the warning sound early Friday after declaring a civil disturbance and only due to an “immediate safety issue,’’ according to Davis and Lt. Franz Schoening.
One of the police SUVs with the audio device on its roof became “a target of the group’s aggression,’’ Davis said. Lasers were pointed at the driver and people lobbed rocks and bottles at the SUV near Southwest Third Avenue and Salmon Street, he said.
The officers activated the “sound boom’’ a couple of different times “as they were essentially under attack with objects being thrown at them,’’ he said.
One lasted two seconds; the other five seconds, according to police.
Police don’t use the loud noise often because they have had “mixed results” getting people to disperse, Davis said. A video of its use in Portland in November 2016 showed people putting fingers to their ears and then cheering when the noise ended. Not many appeared to leave.
Police turned to the device Friday because the aggressors were close to officers, and using tear gas was not an option because it would have “gassed our sound truck,’’ Davis said.
Police didn’t use tear gas Thursday night into Friday morning as calls grew locally and nationwide from activists and experts that the gas does more harm than good and could increase the spread of the coronavirus.
“We haven’t encountered the conditions that had caused us to use it quite as much,’’ Davis said. “We don’t want to use it. What we want is for the violence to stop so we could all take a breath.’’
At a noon press conference, Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner, said he’d favor banning tear gas only if the Police Bureau has another effective alternative.
“Let’s be honest,” Wheeler said. “It’s ugly. It looks ugly. Nobody who knows this community wants to see that.”
Seattle’s mayor, undergoing much the same pushback, on Friday announced a 30-day moratorium on police use of CS gas, a form of tear gas, until the department adopts more stringent policies and training for the use of the chemical agent.
Wheeler said Portland “should ban the use of tear gas with an important provision. I would support the discontinuation of tear gas provided that there are viable alternatives for dispersal that do not involve higher uses of force.”
But he added, “I’m not willing to say today I would ban it.’’
Then as he spoke to small crowd in the city’s downtown Friday night through a bullhorn, Wheeler told them of his ban on the police sonic warning tone. "What about the tear gas? What about the tear gas?'' the crowd pressed.
In response, the mayor took the microphone back and said he learned of Seattle’s 30-day moratorium Friday afternoon and said Portland “should do the same.'' Wheeler said he and his advisers planned to pursue a similar 30-day tear gas ban Saturday.
Also Friday, the group Don’t Shoot Portland filed suit against the city in federal court and sought a temporary restraining order to bar Portland police from using tear gas and smoke as crowd control tactics during protests.
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The acoustic systems are another police tactic mired in controversy.
A trial is set in New York City for September on a federal lawsuit filed by six people who participated in, observed or were documenting protests as photojournalists Dec. 4 and 5, 2014.
They sued the New York Police Department, alleging that the use of the sound device caused hearing loss and violated their 14th Amendment right against excessive force. Demonstrators were protesting a New York police officer’s chokehold of Eric Garner.
The New York Police Department moved to dismiss the suit, arguing partly that the officers were entitled to what’s called qualified immunity from civil liability because the alleged violation wasn’t clearly established law.
Both a federal district judge and a federal appeals court panel rejected those arguments, keeping the case alive.
The lower court found that the devices can cause injuries similar to other police tools capable of being used with excessive force.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then held that “purposefully using a LRAD in a manner capable of causing serious injury to move non‐violent protesters to the sidewalks violates the Fourteenth Amendment under clearly established law.”
Yet the appeals court cautioned that it had only the vantage point of the plaintiffs, and that once officers presented their full evidence about what they saw and knew, the officers “may yet be entitled to qualified immunity” from civil liability for using the devices.
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The red button in the top right corner is the sonic warning tone that Mayor Ted Wheeler has now prohibited Portland police from using. The LRAD more typically is used as a communication tool to broadcast police directions or orders to large masses of people in demonstrations.
According to the suit, LRADs were developed for the U.S. military in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
“If mounted aboard a Navy ship, the device’s loudspeaker could be used to ‘warn off’ boats that came too close. If those warnings are ignored, the device could be used to send out sound at a dangerously high level … to cause pain/hearing damage to try to repel the attack,” the suit said.
This technique, known as “area denial,” has been used in both military and crowd-control settings. The speakers can produce a louder sound than a traditional device, such as a megaphone, and can project over much greater distances.
LRADs can produce volumes of up to 146 decibels, according to the suit.
The threshold for human discomfort begins between 120 and 140 decibels and the National Institute of Health cautions that hearing loss can result from short exposure to sounds at or above 110 to 120 decibels, New York attorney Gideon O. Oliver wrote in a legal brief filed in federal court on behalf of the plaintiffs.
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The sound is designed to be controlled by police, who can alter the frequency, level, quality and length of the alarm.
Schoening, commander of Portland’s Rapid Response Team, said the bureau’s LRAD Model 450 XL ranges from a maximum of 147 decibels to a lower range of 20 to 30 decibels.
“The majority amount of time we use it behind the police line,’’ so it’s not typically set at the highest volume because officers are in front of the noise, he said.
As for its effectiveness early Friday, Schoening said, “I think it worked marginally. It certainly did not send everybody home.’’
Nicky Horowitz, a Portland resident and technical engineer who was among the protesters marching in the city the last several nights, said he wasn’t present when the LRAD was used early Friday.
But he has significant concerns about it.
“When that sound hits somebody it’s at absolutely maximum value,” he said, and could cause lasting hearing damage, migraines or headaches or cause someone to lose their balance.
A March 2016 report by Physicians for Human Rights and International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations said using earplugs or firmly blocking the ears with your hands can decrease the sound by 20 to 30 decibels, but that may not be enough to avoid significant injury.
LRAD Corp.’s marketing document for law enforcement agencies says when the device’s “deterrent tone is used at close range, protesters sense audible discomfort, cover their ears and move away.’’
“Just the act of covering ears with hands reduces the sound pressure level by approximately 25dB and could prevent protestors from throwing projectiles,” its brochure says.
The first documented use of an LRAD by police, according to the New York lawsuit, was in Pittsburgh in connection with the G-20 summit of 2009. New York police also used it during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and Missouri police in Ferguson in 2014 during protests over the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown.
A suit against the city of Pittsburgh from a woman who said she suffered hearing loss during the G-20 demonstrations from the devices settled for $75,000.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
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