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GWOT II - Riot Work
Jun. 8th, 2020 07:05 pmGWOT II - Riot Work
"When you call for mutual aid, you get a ton of cops who come and help you. The problem is, you have no control over them, they do whatever the fuck they want, wreck your city, then leave, and you get to do the paperwork and also take the blame." - anonymous Bay Area police lieutenant
###
Now that Homeland called us once, and we came, I am very afraid that Homeland will call us again.
We've used three types of force on campus:
-- minimal, when dealing with unruly Employees or contractors. Helping people re-think their poor life choices.
-- decisive, when expelling or killing trespassers. Think gunfire.
-- overwhelming, when fighting off armed intruders. Think machine guns.
Now we need to fill in a step, that we haven't really trained anyone in.
Reasonable force. Sufficient force to overcome resistance, which is not deadly force. More than minimal, less than decisive. Think ouch.
So I've trained the supervisors. It's one more damn thing to remember on top of all the rest.
The officers have already been trained, more or less, in (short) baton, pepper spray, handcuffs (and zip ties as a backup), handguns ... and especially what the pre-War news media would have called "high power rifles" and the rest of us call "hunting rifles."
Now we need to add long baton and shield.
We won't be using less lethals. We don't have hardly any, and what little we have, we are saving for special situations. No pepperball, no tear gas grenades, no rubber bullets, no beanbag rounds. Well, that last is a lie - but they are remarkably unreliable, and our one non-lethal shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds has rested uncomfortably in the back of a reaction truck for months, not yet used.
We do use flashbangs, when we can get them, which is rarely. But we use them like offensive grenades - throw them in a room just before you break in shooting.
We're not going to shoot unarmed demonstrators. We're not Homeland.
But we're not going to fight a unified force of angry people with individual guards using individual combatives. Naught down that road but death.
So I am training three roles. Have to keep it as simple as we can. Shield men, stick men and cuffing men.
Normally I try for gender neutral language. On this subject, I've given up. The guards are all men, no matter what they have in their pants.
A shield man carries a shield made from half a plastic drum or from plywood. Their job is to overlap, to hold the line, and on command to bash people with the surface (ouch!) or down with the edge (yuck).
A stick man uses a long stick to push back, to push forward like a spear and stab someone with the non-pointy end - reliably breaking heads, jaws, ribs and rupturing guts. In a pinch, the stick man can strike through the line in a lunge, or hold a line themselves by striking repeatedly.
A cuffing man takes care of the enemy that we've marched over or overcome somehow. Standard arrest and control tactics, except that in a riot situation, you're doing it in the temporary bubble like safety of the riot line. It ranges from putting a gentle hand on the arm of the person who is compliant, to 'knock 'em down and fuck 'em', to putting in the boot to make them show their wrists.
The fastest way to train everyone is to separate them into two teams. Then switch, so everyone is nice and mad. Then switch again. For extra unfairness, count everyone off by evens to break up the fragile unit cohesion, and do it again.
We now have long sticks, shields and bundles of pre-fastened zip ties ready to go. Waiting for the call we never get.
###
I am in my quarters. I am reviewing video from yet another damned incident. In between reviews, I dash to the wardroom to get a bite of breakfast, the shower to use same, the toilet to do the obvious ... but I am still half-naked clicking and taking notes when the phone on the desk rings with the triple chirp that means Dispatch.
"We have a mutual aid activation for Homeland. Two arrest and control teams. San Jose City Hall."
I don't want to go again.
So I gear up and roll out. I am our best qualified leader for this kind of work, everyone else is a rookie.
I am so tempted to take Arturo. But we need strong people to defend the site.
So I take Patty instead.
###
It feels a lot the same as the parade incident, when our convoy of four vehicles and two dozen guards arrives at staging at 10th and I-280.
Another burning vehicle. This one is a MRAP. Apparently it got caught with the hatches open. The greasy burning smell of pork wafts on the wind.
We've smelled it before. We are inured.
"Report to the Homeland building, south side."
So we do. Two blocks away, we have to deploy out of our vehicles for all the debris, barriers, etc. We bully a guard post into letting us pull past into their garage, then leave two heavily-armed 'men' to make sure our vehicles will be there when we're done.
The twenty-two of us remaining form a double line.
The two in the lead have shields and short batons.
Patty and I are running right behind, in the second rank. I have a stick. She has a submachine gun. Doctrine puts the assistant leader in the back, but she's too new to all this. Instead, I've put Shreve in the back, with orders to tell me if we leave anyone behind and authority to beat them if they are too slow.
There are scattered demonstrators in front of us.
The well-dressed anti-HA, or anti-Homeland, or anti-American terrorist, wears all black clothing with something over the face to prevent facial recognition. They risk not just arrest but internment. They don't carry guns or otherwise the Homeland snipers would just kill them - and that's no guarantee of safety either. But they do carry knives, blades, and often have concealed pistols to go with their firebombs and 'picket signs' made of 2x4
"Bang Shields!" I order.
There is a horrible plastic on metal clacking sound as we start whacking our short batons into our shields. Stick men instead are at the ready. Cuff men have their firearms in hand, their greetings to everyone until we actually form line.
Most demonstrators scatter out of our way.
One is run down. I feel his ribs crack under my boot as I run over him. As the whole line follows, I doubt that he survives.
One starts to level a small pistol. We casually, in passing, what the French call en passant, shoot him dead.
There is a pitched battle in front of us. Homeland arrest and control troops in their characteristic garb are laying about them. As they are heavily burdened with expensive equipment and thick armor, the lightly equipped demonstrators are making hash of them.
More importantly, they lack unit cohesion. They are not fighting as a unit, but as individuals.
All lives splatter.
We demonstrate this by plunging into the center of the fight and thumping the crap out of the demonstrators.
My instructions in our vehicles during the convoy movement were very precise, and arguably treasonous.
"No leg shots! Torso and arms. I want them to run away if they can."
We are shouting our battle cry. This is not an affectation, it is vitally necessary for us to recognize each other so as to not start hurting each other. But it can't be treasonous either.
So we've selected the Client motto.
"Code wins wars!" "Code wins wars!" we are chanting.
It also has the significant advantage that we don't claim affiliation with anyone. We're just the guys who keep the world safe for people who write code that wins wars.
"CODE!" I shout while striking at a rioter's arm.
"WINS!" I shout again on the reverse stroke.
He falls and I smack him in the head with my stick, pulling the stroke as much as I dare. "WARS!"
Dazed, he runs off. I make no effort to stop him, and pick out the next person showing fight.
Soon we have control over the area, and turn it over to the shaky Homeland troops.
They look like they still want to fight. So we form line and disengage.
In riot operations, there is something called a 'flying squad.' The reaction force. The people who go where the action is hottest.
I still haven't linked up with my nominal Homeland commander. But we are the flying squad, and we are kicking ass and not even bothering with names.
We circle the Homeland building. Its defenders watch us. They get something right, they're not shooting at us. But they watch us.
We are walking fearlessly through area they don't control.
On our second lap, resistance is slight.
On the third, resistance is absent.
I walk up cautiously to the Homeland guards on the main sally port. Ask for their leader.
He comes out.
Once he gets it through his head that we're not some Homeland unit he hasn't heard of, and therefore pose no political threat to his position, he tells me quietly to fuck off.
The machine guns behind him are a powerful argument.
So we go back to our vehicles, mount up and return to Staging for our next assignment.
The staging officer seems to have had a mild stroke.
He keeps staring at his tablet, then staring at us, then staring at his tablet again.
"Our next assignment?" I prompt again.
He is dazed and jaw dropped.
"Assignment, sir?"
I finally get him to sign our ICS accountability form and check us in.
Then we return to Site. We all have cuts and bruises. But the worst injury was a guard who twisted his leg and is limping. He gets a probably unnecessary stretcher bearer ride to the infirmary. Good practice for everyone.
###
"Anti American Terrorists Routed! Brave Homeland defenders..." the commentator rants.
... and the video is images of us, on the Homeland security cameras.
Mutual aid.
Plus shots of the Homeland troops coming out and gathering up the injured demonstrators who couldn't crawl away.
They aren't interned.
They are sidewalked.
Boldly broadcast murders. I stop myself when I start automatically running a count.
Wyatt is recording. I will have to watch this over and over again, analyzing everything from our own response to Homeland's camera capability and angles.
And we're going to keep secret copies.
Someday, someone will testify. Probably not me. Evidence has to speak for the dead, because they no longer can.
###
My team has done a good job. I've told them so. They've kept the site safe. I've told them that too. And they know, and they believe me.
I know that I've helped murder people I'd rather be fighting alongside.
There is no one to tell me that I've done a good job.
And that is right and proper.
I've made yet another devil's deal, to keep these three thousand odd people alive a little bit longer.
Betty comes in. Her face is ashen.
"Echo 18, we have a problem."
###
The body has been cut down.
One of my painfully trained reaction team guards has hung themselves, with a carefully braided extension cord, in one of the restrooms. I won't say which one, and I won't share their gender.
They are, horribly, still breathing despite hypoxia, profound cyanosis, snoring respirations and use of accessory muscles. Broken spinal vertebrae for certain. Not conscious, and if they are lucky, they will never regain consciousness.
I do an abbreviated crime scene workup as the stretcher bearers stabilize them on a backboard and rush them off, pointlessly, to an infirmary that can do nothing for them.
It is merely more good training for them, on a live manikin.
###
I have finished my report when my E-mail chimes.
I am CC'd on the site death notifications.
I re-open my report and add this detail.
###
"Attention To Orders
"We are all by now aware of the suicide of one of our guards today, in the aftermath of a mutual aid event...
I go through the motions. Talk about the people we are keeping safe, the important work.
I have to edit it twice to take out hints of treason.
Wyatt finds more. So does Betty.
By the time we are done, my napkin of bullshit justifications is more like a lace doily.
I hit 'SEND' anyway.
###
In real war, you don't really get to pick either your friends or your enemies.
I'm not on Homeland's side. I'm not an anti-American partisan.
I'm on a third side, the "Code wins wars!" side.
When you're in the middle of the road, you get hit from both sides.
If we ally with Homeland, we give up what is left of our humanity.
If we ally with the Resistance, we all get sidewalked if we are lucky, more likely tortured to death.
I long for a clean fight.
But everyone there is to fight is my brothers and my sisters.
That is the reality of civil war.
"When you call for mutual aid, you get a ton of cops who come and help you. The problem is, you have no control over them, they do whatever the fuck they want, wreck your city, then leave, and you get to do the paperwork and also take the blame." - anonymous Bay Area police lieutenant
###
Now that Homeland called us once, and we came, I am very afraid that Homeland will call us again.
We've used three types of force on campus:
-- minimal, when dealing with unruly Employees or contractors. Helping people re-think their poor life choices.
-- decisive, when expelling or killing trespassers. Think gunfire.
-- overwhelming, when fighting off armed intruders. Think machine guns.
Now we need to fill in a step, that we haven't really trained anyone in.
Reasonable force. Sufficient force to overcome resistance, which is not deadly force. More than minimal, less than decisive. Think ouch.
So I've trained the supervisors. It's one more damn thing to remember on top of all the rest.
The officers have already been trained, more or less, in (short) baton, pepper spray, handcuffs (and zip ties as a backup), handguns ... and especially what the pre-War news media would have called "high power rifles" and the rest of us call "hunting rifles."
Now we need to add long baton and shield.
We won't be using less lethals. We don't have hardly any, and what little we have, we are saving for special situations. No pepperball, no tear gas grenades, no rubber bullets, no beanbag rounds. Well, that last is a lie - but they are remarkably unreliable, and our one non-lethal shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds has rested uncomfortably in the back of a reaction truck for months, not yet used.
We do use flashbangs, when we can get them, which is rarely. But we use them like offensive grenades - throw them in a room just before you break in shooting.
We're not going to shoot unarmed demonstrators. We're not Homeland.
But we're not going to fight a unified force of angry people with individual guards using individual combatives. Naught down that road but death.
So I am training three roles. Have to keep it as simple as we can. Shield men, stick men and cuffing men.
Normally I try for gender neutral language. On this subject, I've given up. The guards are all men, no matter what they have in their pants.
A shield man carries a shield made from half a plastic drum or from plywood. Their job is to overlap, to hold the line, and on command to bash people with the surface (ouch!) or down with the edge (yuck).
A stick man uses a long stick to push back, to push forward like a spear and stab someone with the non-pointy end - reliably breaking heads, jaws, ribs and rupturing guts. In a pinch, the stick man can strike through the line in a lunge, or hold a line themselves by striking repeatedly.
A cuffing man takes care of the enemy that we've marched over or overcome somehow. Standard arrest and control tactics, except that in a riot situation, you're doing it in the temporary bubble like safety of the riot line. It ranges from putting a gentle hand on the arm of the person who is compliant, to 'knock 'em down and fuck 'em', to putting in the boot to make them show their wrists.
The fastest way to train everyone is to separate them into two teams. Then switch, so everyone is nice and mad. Then switch again. For extra unfairness, count everyone off by evens to break up the fragile unit cohesion, and do it again.
We now have long sticks, shields and bundles of pre-fastened zip ties ready to go. Waiting for the call we never get.
###
I am in my quarters. I am reviewing video from yet another damned incident. In between reviews, I dash to the wardroom to get a bite of breakfast, the shower to use same, the toilet to do the obvious ... but I am still half-naked clicking and taking notes when the phone on the desk rings with the triple chirp that means Dispatch.
"We have a mutual aid activation for Homeland. Two arrest and control teams. San Jose City Hall."
I don't want to go again.
So I gear up and roll out. I am our best qualified leader for this kind of work, everyone else is a rookie.
I am so tempted to take Arturo. But we need strong people to defend the site.
So I take Patty instead.
###
It feels a lot the same as the parade incident, when our convoy of four vehicles and two dozen guards arrives at staging at 10th and I-280.
Another burning vehicle. This one is a MRAP. Apparently it got caught with the hatches open. The greasy burning smell of pork wafts on the wind.
We've smelled it before. We are inured.
"Report to the Homeland building, south side."
So we do. Two blocks away, we have to deploy out of our vehicles for all the debris, barriers, etc. We bully a guard post into letting us pull past into their garage, then leave two heavily-armed 'men' to make sure our vehicles will be there when we're done.
The twenty-two of us remaining form a double line.
The two in the lead have shields and short batons.
Patty and I are running right behind, in the second rank. I have a stick. She has a submachine gun. Doctrine puts the assistant leader in the back, but she's too new to all this. Instead, I've put Shreve in the back, with orders to tell me if we leave anyone behind and authority to beat them if they are too slow.
There are scattered demonstrators in front of us.
The well-dressed anti-HA, or anti-Homeland, or anti-American terrorist, wears all black clothing with something over the face to prevent facial recognition. They risk not just arrest but internment. They don't carry guns or otherwise the Homeland snipers would just kill them - and that's no guarantee of safety either. But they do carry knives, blades, and often have concealed pistols to go with their firebombs and 'picket signs' made of 2x4
"Bang Shields!" I order.
There is a horrible plastic on metal clacking sound as we start whacking our short batons into our shields. Stick men instead are at the ready. Cuff men have their firearms in hand, their greetings to everyone until we actually form line.
Most demonstrators scatter out of our way.
One is run down. I feel his ribs crack under my boot as I run over him. As the whole line follows, I doubt that he survives.
One starts to level a small pistol. We casually, in passing, what the French call en passant, shoot him dead.
There is a pitched battle in front of us. Homeland arrest and control troops in their characteristic garb are laying about them. As they are heavily burdened with expensive equipment and thick armor, the lightly equipped demonstrators are making hash of them.
More importantly, they lack unit cohesion. They are not fighting as a unit, but as individuals.
All lives splatter.
We demonstrate this by plunging into the center of the fight and thumping the crap out of the demonstrators.
My instructions in our vehicles during the convoy movement were very precise, and arguably treasonous.
"No leg shots! Torso and arms. I want them to run away if they can."
We are shouting our battle cry. This is not an affectation, it is vitally necessary for us to recognize each other so as to not start hurting each other. But it can't be treasonous either.
So we've selected the Client motto.
"Code wins wars!" "Code wins wars!" we are chanting.
It also has the significant advantage that we don't claim affiliation with anyone. We're just the guys who keep the world safe for people who write code that wins wars.
"CODE!" I shout while striking at a rioter's arm.
"WINS!" I shout again on the reverse stroke.
He falls and I smack him in the head with my stick, pulling the stroke as much as I dare. "WARS!"
Dazed, he runs off. I make no effort to stop him, and pick out the next person showing fight.
Soon we have control over the area, and turn it over to the shaky Homeland troops.
They look like they still want to fight. So we form line and disengage.
In riot operations, there is something called a 'flying squad.' The reaction force. The people who go where the action is hottest.
I still haven't linked up with my nominal Homeland commander. But we are the flying squad, and we are kicking ass and not even bothering with names.
We circle the Homeland building. Its defenders watch us. They get something right, they're not shooting at us. But they watch us.
We are walking fearlessly through area they don't control.
On our second lap, resistance is slight.
On the third, resistance is absent.
I walk up cautiously to the Homeland guards on the main sally port. Ask for their leader.
He comes out.
Once he gets it through his head that we're not some Homeland unit he hasn't heard of, and therefore pose no political threat to his position, he tells me quietly to fuck off.
The machine guns behind him are a powerful argument.
So we go back to our vehicles, mount up and return to Staging for our next assignment.
The staging officer seems to have had a mild stroke.
He keeps staring at his tablet, then staring at us, then staring at his tablet again.
"Our next assignment?" I prompt again.
He is dazed and jaw dropped.
"Assignment, sir?"
I finally get him to sign our ICS accountability form and check us in.
Then we return to Site. We all have cuts and bruises. But the worst injury was a guard who twisted his leg and is limping. He gets a probably unnecessary stretcher bearer ride to the infirmary. Good practice for everyone.
###
"Anti American Terrorists Routed! Brave Homeland defenders..." the commentator rants.
... and the video is images of us, on the Homeland security cameras.
Mutual aid.
Plus shots of the Homeland troops coming out and gathering up the injured demonstrators who couldn't crawl away.
They aren't interned.
They are sidewalked.
Boldly broadcast murders. I stop myself when I start automatically running a count.
Wyatt is recording. I will have to watch this over and over again, analyzing everything from our own response to Homeland's camera capability and angles.
And we're going to keep secret copies.
Someday, someone will testify. Probably not me. Evidence has to speak for the dead, because they no longer can.
###
My team has done a good job. I've told them so. They've kept the site safe. I've told them that too. And they know, and they believe me.
I know that I've helped murder people I'd rather be fighting alongside.
There is no one to tell me that I've done a good job.
And that is right and proper.
I've made yet another devil's deal, to keep these three thousand odd people alive a little bit longer.
Betty comes in. Her face is ashen.
"Echo 18, we have a problem."
###
The body has been cut down.
One of my painfully trained reaction team guards has hung themselves, with a carefully braided extension cord, in one of the restrooms. I won't say which one, and I won't share their gender.
They are, horribly, still breathing despite hypoxia, profound cyanosis, snoring respirations and use of accessory muscles. Broken spinal vertebrae for certain. Not conscious, and if they are lucky, they will never regain consciousness.
I do an abbreviated crime scene workup as the stretcher bearers stabilize them on a backboard and rush them off, pointlessly, to an infirmary that can do nothing for them.
It is merely more good training for them, on a live manikin.
###
I have finished my report when my E-mail chimes.
I am CC'd on the site death notifications.
I re-open my report and add this detail.
###
"Attention To Orders
"We are all by now aware of the suicide of one of our guards today, in the aftermath of a mutual aid event...
I go through the motions. Talk about the people we are keeping safe, the important work.
I have to edit it twice to take out hints of treason.
Wyatt finds more. So does Betty.
By the time we are done, my napkin of bullshit justifications is more like a lace doily.
I hit 'SEND' anyway.
###
In real war, you don't really get to pick either your friends or your enemies.
I'm not on Homeland's side. I'm not an anti-American partisan.
I'm on a third side, the "Code wins wars!" side.
When you're in the middle of the road, you get hit from both sides.
If we ally with Homeland, we give up what is left of our humanity.
If we ally with the Resistance, we all get sidewalked if we are lucky, more likely tortured to death.
I long for a clean fight.
But everyone there is to fight is my brothers and my sisters.
That is the reality of civil war.
